Reader Q&A: No Longer Able to Function In Life

Woman sitting under night sky full of stars.

A total life collapse after spiritual awakening.

In this Reader Q&A we discuss energetic overwhelm, the difference between spiritual awakening and transitory spiritual experiences, mental health, destructive Kundalini and how to re-establish energetic boundaries.

My heart really went out to this reader when they shared their account of spiritual awakening and the total collapse of their life and well being that came after. Let’s hear how things have unfolded for them a little over a year after their spiritual awakening experience…

Reader Question

I would be very grateful for your outside perspective and maybe some message on how to recover and sustain the gains.

My awakening happened in the Winter of 2020. Before that I meditated in Dao tradition for 7 years, which, as I now realize, is one of the most potent meditations that changed and purified my body on the deepest levels. I also later understood, after listening to Shinzen Young’s lecture, that light energy, once received, starts acting very differently in a person, depending on how open and purified, the body was. This understanding helped me immensely and explained why the energy was moving and growing in such potent and intensely vibrant fashion that it was. I now realize that my body was more ready for the transformation than my mind.

At the night of awakening, I felt that light entered my body and penetrated and transformed each cell. It was a very subtle pleasurable sensation, but the next day when I woke up everything was different. My perception changed tremendously: everything around seemed so beautiful, peaceful, and clear. If felt as if before I was looking at the world through the glasses, the lenses of my own mind, and now, suddenly, the glasses were removed, I saw the world directly, clearly. I also felt filled with the life force energy.

At first, for about a month and a half, the light life force energy in my body was sitting sort of quietly if that’s the right word to describe it. I functioned at my best, smoothly, and felt great and healthy, which was a drastic shift from the turmoil and exhaustion that I was experiencing for several years before the awakening. I was quietly observing perceptual shifts which were already many, but still did not take their full force and were easily digestible at that point.

After this period, the energy started doing its work with me. And that’s where the trouble started, not immediately though. The first piece of work was going into the depth of perception. I started feeling the energy shifting more towards the base of my spine and the lower parts of my body, my base. This was not unusual as I used to settle in my body like this in meditation practice, anchoring and grounding at the root and the dantian, below the stomach. I knew the process, I liked it, but now with tons of life force energy the process was way more intense. I went into profound states of bliss and recognized the Creative Energy, love, peace, harmony, stillness, and spaciousness everywhere. Such perception would have been nothing but amazing, but after some time other things started to unfold.

As I was moving more into the depth, the karmic, generational, and other still not worked energies in my body started to come to the surface along with the old patterns in the mind and behavior. I was surprised to see these patterns again, as I thought that I have substantially worked through them, but, apparently, they wanted to be seen again from a higher level of consciousness now. Some of them I handled very well. As soon as one of such, still not integrated energy bubbles, came to the surface, it was detected in my body and reached my consciousness, and it was very quickly transmuted and integrated as long as I did not get caught up in the mind stories.

Again, the process was not new to me, I was used to doing it in meditation, and really throughout my whole life. Yet again, with the big energy in my body, it was very different now. On one level it was easier, since my transmutation capabilities were now enhanced thousands of times more, but on the other level it was more difficult, because of extreme sensitivity, perceptual changes, and other mechanics of big energy functioning that were not yet familiar, especially when I got to the more challenging bubbles.

Then, old karmic structures started unfolding with even greater speed (every other day if not every day) and force, now reaching past lives, and what even felt like my lives as animals, etc. I am not stating this with 100% certainly, but perceptually it felt exactly like that. I still experienced bliss 24/7 throughout the process, but if I did not handle some of the processes well, the energy would give me immediate feedbacks, which could be described as zapping sensations, electrical shocks, energetic discombobulation, and so on, though these descriptions are not too precise, and I am still seeking words for these experiences. It was a relief to learn from your blogs about the importance of not being sloppy with the attention, about the difference between the round bliss state, and the square ecstasy one, and so many other hugely important points. Yet, each time I made a slip, it was very difficult to recover and bring myself back into balance, aligning all my subtle bodies (mental, energetic, etc.) in one direction again and again, and readjusting myself into a state of harmony.

For about a year and a half I was constantly trying to figure out the “new rules” of being and constantly recovering from slips. Meanwhile, the energy inside was growing and growing, and took me into such perceptual shifts that made it practically impossible to communicate with people, especially the ones with whom old identity roles were firmly in places. I had to stop working and had many challenges in relationships with my close ones.

My maladaptive coping strategies rose to the surface, and I started acting out like a teenager, traumatizing my relatives and myself, it was a real mess. Everything built up, and one day, I felt like I didn’t want to live any more (a strange decision really, since I was in constant bliss and ecstasy despite anything), but understandable in other ways, especially since that way of thinking was my karmic pattern as well. One night, when I regressed into that old mind state, I felt like big energy became unanchored from the dantian and exited my body.

Since that day, in July this year, things really went downhill. After a part of me left (I am not quite sure what that part really is and if it is meant to be re-integrated back into my being in this life or not), I knew big energy was not generating within me anymore, but there was still a huge amount of life force energy still in my body, perhaps it was prana or ojas, as some spiritual traditions explain, I am not really sure, but I still had a reservoir of life force energy. It started to exhaust itself, and by late August my life force energies were depleted to what it felt like almost zero. The wholeness was lost and subtle energetic bodies which constitute a human were all torn apart.

It took me a lot of grounding and effort to collect myself together at least to some basic level of functioning. In addition, falling from that height that I did was incredibly frightening and intense. I think I handled the fall pretty well anyways, for a few months was only eating and sleeping, and walking in nature, and breathing, everything in the most predictable and stabilizing manner possible…this worked.

This is where I am now: practically, still not feeling capable of working, especially with people, which was my occupation, applying for a disability for the second time, with limited financial resources. Living by myself, not capable of watching TV or reading a lot, and can only socialize minimally, all of which is challenging for who I am, and especially for such prolonged periods of time that all of this is taking.

Perceptual Shifts and “New Rules”

Perceptual challenges are still hard to handle, when the big energy was in my body, it changed it so much that my receptors are capable of perceiving wide ranges of consciousnesses, almost always across time and space.

For example, I have discovered your blog and videos when I still had a potent energy grounded in my body, and at that time I perceived all your power and light in your voice and texts, but it was comfortable for me then. Now, I can hardly read a few sentences at a time from your posts or listen to no more than 2-3 minutes of the videos. If I do more than that, the huge light of your consciousness starts overwhelming my body. 

So basically, my body is sensitive enough to perceive the wide ranges of reality, but there is no potent energy inside, as it was, to give me power to not be overwhelmed by what my body perceives. Before the awakening, it was not like that. I was always sensitive, but I would simply not know that such gigantic light energies could exist in human bodies, and I did not have the receptors to know of these ranges, thus I could listen to Eckhart Tolle, all day long if I wanted to, for example, and my small consciousness at that time would be perfectly fine, only taking in what was within its range of perceptual capability.

Now, all my previous teachers, people with big energies, like yours, Tolle’s, Sadhguru’s, and Shinzen’s who, actually, have the needed information for me, overwhelm me.

Perhaps I do not need to listen or read what big energy people have to say at this time, which would be fine for a while, and I did stop reading and watching the videos unless I have an urgent question, but I am trying to recover, and who should I consult with? Trying to handle things by myself has led me to where I am, so it looks like I do need to have some guidance, and I have an intuition that my guides at this time are people with big energy.

Moreover, I cannot even live in my own house at this time; since I unanchored the big energy from my body, I was able to remain in the house for about 3-4 months after that, until certain perceptual capacities closed within me. Once certain faculties closed, my house acts like people with big energies on me now, the house became too powerful for me to be in.

Luckily, I had a basement, far from fully finished and comfortable conditions for living, but it is a blessing I can stay there now, otherwise I can only go upstairs into the house of a few minutes. This is another shock for me, which is really ungrounding and destabilizing, and I am not sure for how long this will last. For now, I am just waiting until certain receptors in my body close down even more, but so far, they are not.

Maybe I do not know how to regulate yet, turning my receptor radars on and off as needed. I believe such skills are definitely necessary, and I have a sense that the degree of perception is related to the degree with which I am involved with a certain consciousness (be it a physical space or a person). With my own house it does not work like this though. The energy there is so potent that it acts on me immediately, and especially when I am sleeping, so sleeping there is not an option now.

All the perceptual changes were huge since the day of awakening, but interesting to explore and, in my opinion, a gift. Your blog “It’s just a phase” has been a big help here as well. However, after the big energy left my body, it is not that much fun anymore. After I stabilized and several months passed, I started feeling that I am returning to being able to tolerate “normal” humanness: some music, thought without lots of passionate emotional drama, and some sense of “I”, though a changing version of it, etc.

At first I thought that this partial return to the human world was a sign that I have failed existing with the big energy, and, thus, with time will come back to the human world as it used to be before the awakening, but the longer I observe, I sense that this will probably not be the case, like you said “you cannot have your old bicycle back,” and it looks like I am on the direction to regaining wholeness on the levels of bigger more sensitive energies.

When I was operating a bicycle, I was pretty familiar with the process of breaking and repairing, re-integrating, regaining wholeness, but now, this process feels different as well. Some things are similar, such as grounding and re-installation of hope, but others are not.

After searching through your website as well as learning from other enlightened people, the big picture starts coming to me, and “new rules,” which also help in recovery process, become clearer. I start feeling that my mind becomes more prepared and more on board. These rules are not complicated, and well-known to all people, but I find that on this level of “operating a fast-powered car,” they need to be deeply realized and abided by with unwavering focus and commitment.

I now have an overall sense of what I need to practice daily: staying spacious, pleasant, grateful, life-oriented, and most importantly calm without freak-out reaction to anything, in my case, even the most unusual shocking sensations and difficult decision. I also need to remain one-pointed with my attention, unentangled with others’ energies and my own or others’ small-mind (small identity) stuff, grounded in the present moment, and trusting that life will unfold naturally if I don’t impose my desired outcomes on it. It took me a while to summarize these main points for myself and find the words which speak to me the most.

One of the most important realizations about these “rules” for me is that they have less to do with conceptual morality, or good useful things to do for the self or others, instead I now view them as laws of physics of nature.

Many people also remind me that self-compassion and self-forgiveness, is another part of the process of living a human life, and I agree, but, again, like you said, I am paraphrasing “with this type of car sloppiness cannot be afforded.” I know, after my crashes, my anxiety of being sloppy escalated, and I hope I’ll shed some fears of making a mistake as I continue to recover. So, I am continuing discovering and practicing “the new rules.” In other words, I am learning to think, speak, and act in a manner that is congruent with the energetic changes, basically working on embodying the new energy and the larger identity.

On the list of things to learn and practice, letting life unfold without attachments and overthinking is still very tricky for me to do. I know both intellectually and intuitively that’s the way to go, but what about my aspirations? What Sadhguru has to say about human desires has brought a lot of clarity, basically saying that desires are impossible to kill, but “desiring non-compulsively” is the way.

After awakening especially, I started feeling a shift around this aspect, feeling that chasing desires is too controlling and makes things even worse. Sometimes this shift is almost to the point of feeling that I do not have to do anything, and that everything that I need to experience will be presenting itself in my life at times, which are also beyond my control.

This new perception, almost as if the main points in my destiny are in some ways predetermined, is still somewhat bizarre for me. I trust it, it feels real, and not too foreign based on my cultural background, but just challenging. But it’s not like everything is set in stone, I also feel that developing keen awareness and skillful action is required on my part and influence my further destiny.

So basically, as in serenity prayer, I am trying to have the wisdom of understanding what is within my control and what is not. In this process, my fear is that I will make too many detours and miss the bigger calling for this life. Every detour is still an experience and still enriches us, I realize, but as discussed in your blog “falling out of life” I just want to feel like I am living my own true life, being in “my own frequency stream.”

A Cat Situation

From what I see, one of the things that tips me over, in addition to frequent spurs of despair, is also not being clear on my internal intuitive guidance in terms of making decisions. At this period of my life, it feels like every step that I make is a disaster. My perception and preferences changed so much that each step I take I bump against something.

What was previously familiar and how I used to engage with the world is not working now. From your blog I figured I’m in a limbo land for sure. I am trying to lay low and do not do unnecessary moves, so like you said, “all the dead mind stuff and old persona paradigms can digest and alchemize,” but even the slightest moves are not working.

For example, I had an intuition to get a dog as a present for my parents, especially my father, who was going through things. I went to a shelter, got a sweet little dog and he seems to be a great fit for my parents, and dad loves the animal. I love the dog as well, but I soon discovered that I have a serious unconscious fear to it, few times almost to the point of a panic attack, and a really bad allergy. With my post awakening type of increased sensitivity and physiological changes, this type of fear and allergies are incredibly hard to handle even with the help of medication, which I now take every time I am visiting.

Similar story with a different spin happened with a cat. I had an intuition, a vision rather, of a cat that entered my consciousness. It was a knowing that a cat for me is now available at a local shelter. I opened a shelter website, and she was there. In an attempt to trust the intuitive guidance, I went to see a kitten, felt a connection and got her. Now, even that move turned out to be a difficulty. Despite our connection and love for this animal, I started noticing that I do not want to be around her.

I discovered that I prefer to focus inward not outward at this time of my life, as well as spend lots of time in meditation, silence, and stillness, feeling my own essence, my own breathing, and claiming my own space without adjusting or sharing it even with a kitten.

It is possible that silence and stillness are called for so strongly now, because I am still not too well after the fall, and simplicity is best, if not requirement, for the recovery. And it is also possible that awakening changed my preferences in relationships, even with animals, and maybe this kitty can help me understand what they are.

With my old cat, some years ago, I used to love to snuggle and harmonize with her purring; now, I was unpleasantly surprised to discover that I strongly dislike this way of being together, and it is difficult for me to be attuned to other being’s breathing. It is as if I want to go all in into the depth of my own very slow breath, be one with my own breath, only focus on that and nothing else. I now understand how much I want to be in my own field, not harmonizing with anyone, and it’s upsetting because this new kitty is so sweet and full of purrs. I truly love and, on some level, enjoy her energy, but it’s still hard to be around her, what a strange mix.

On some level, I love taking care of her because of how gentle, kind, confident, patient, beautiful, curiously open, and responsive to good training she is, but on the other level it is distracting to me, and I just cannot stand walking carefully, being mindful of not stepping on a cat. Something in me wants to walk firmly with space around my footsteps and focused on my own energy. This strong desire to be in my own energy might also be intensified at this time, because I was in a long-term codependent relationship, which finished only a few months ago, and then all the energetic troubles happened, and I did not have the time to rest, to be in peace by myself, the experience that I crave now, and anxious that I will not have the opportunity for such experience in the future.

I was also thinking that perhaps life gave me an animal, so my focus does shifts outward some and that it is time to focus outward, or perhaps a cat is teaching me how to hold my own space and still have a relationship. I do not mind practicing these lessons, but still at the moment the experience feels ungrounding and against the currant, and I just don’t know if that’s what I am supposed to be doing.

There is some part of me, which I perceive as a bigger self, that strongly calls me to focus inward, get familiar with my own essence more, continue stabilizing in stillness and working on recovering the wholeness. I want to answer the call, and I am afraid that if I don’t, I will lose the momentum, my chance to closely align with higher purpose for this life. Sometimes I think that I need to be strong and prioritize my spiritual transformations above all other relationships, when it’s possible, for a period of time.

Now, I start thinking that maybe my intuition of getting a cat was dictated by my impatience to get back to life and live “normal.” I am afraid that if I get involved with a cat or other relationships now, the gate to other dimensional perception that was open for me will close completely, and I will not be able to “jump into my own stream.” It has already closed a lot after my missteps. I know it’s a relatively small decision in life, but what should I do with the cat situation here? It feels like my intuition gives me conflicting messages.

With all of this going on a big level of spiritual transformation in my life, and on a level of confusion with the pet animals, I just don’t even know where to find my footing at this time, understand my intuition, and how to trust myself. Now, reflecting on everything that I’ve been through and what is still happening, when I see this whole picture, it is frightening and anxiety-provoking, even though I do my best not to fall into it, especially now when falling into emotions is so uncomfortable physiologically, and I just cannot afford it, another shift to adjust to.

But it is scary because I have realized the magnitude of the big energy, and what it did to my body, and how different the rules of living with this type of energy are, how fast and precisely I needed to adjust, and the aftermath of me not being able to do so. Not to mention a huge loss that I experience after the big energy left.

Luckily, one thing that I am clear on is the need and desire of working on and finishing the ongoing school projects, which are creative and inspirational. I focus on that, and the present moment, and living one step at a time, dropping the desire for things to be different, when I catch it arising in me, which is often. I also try to do some things that uplift me, such as working on school projects outside of the house now or talking to friends occasionally. I am considering trying a low-key job, but not sure if I can do it, it is the same with dating.

I also consult with the doctors, and work with a therapist, who understands a lot. This is good, it helps, and I try to be patient, but the period of intense struggle is going on for about five years now all together, and in the past two weeks I started noticing that I am getting more and more depleted and running out of inner resources that keeps me going pretty rapidly, at times not being able to get out of the bed or do basic tasks. I noticed that I start losing hope for a possibility of living a generally stable life of well-being. I also started being afraid that I will not be able to handle these huge energetic shifts, or ground, or recover properly and might become completely overwhelmed by everything.

The energy within my body, this new “upgraded” version, is so, using your expression “exquisitely sensitive”, and with me not fully knowing how to manage it, something in my energy system constantly breaks.

My energy feels as if it is in a free form now, and it is up to my mind to keep it a harmonious form, any even the slightest deviations in my mind from the steadfast direction, immediately reflect themselves on the energy. The second I recover, some other energetic break or discombobulation happens, and it is exhausting. It never used to be like this before the “upgrade.”

Additional Information

I asked the reader a few clarifying questions. 

AMARA: What, exactly, happens when you interact with people? Not Big Energy people, but just in your day to day interactions.

READER: My interactions with people have been fluctuating a lot since the awakening. Right after it, interactions were not a problem, I felt as if I was taken outside of the matrix and was unplugged from all people on an emotional and other levels, while my own energy was completely whole. Instead, I became connected to people only though the awareness that we are essentially made from the same energy of love. Then when karma started to unfold, and energy started to grow communications became challenging on many levels.

Then, when the big energy was unanchored from me in the Summer, I was not able to socialize at all for about 3-4 months, because I would sense all kinds of things and did not have a stable grounding to not be affected. I also have numerous breakages in my energy field from my previous mistakes of living with big energy.

For example, I still had, and still do, a breakage of energy in my heart area, after the incident which happened with the person whom I dated. After that energy breakage I became vulnerable to becoming entangled with other people (all kinds of people, and especially if they had a similar “wound”).

For example, one time when I was listening to a podcast, I started sensing that the speaker had a wound in their heart area, perhaps similar to mine, and I still continued to listen for another 20 mins or so, and then I felt that this affected me negatively. The little energy recovery that I had in my heart was torn apart again, I felt physical pain, energetic contamination, and as if the level of my consciousness (clarity of thought and presence) was rather abruptly and strongly diminished. It took me several days of silence and deep breathing to recover. I regained an energetic connection in my heart (though the energy there is still rather weak) and, I feel, it is still prone to fast breaking. So, I stopped watching and listening videos all together after several incidents like this.

I also felt that I do not have the energy to talk or to listen. For example, if I talked to a friend for more than 5-10 mins, I would start feeling that little energy that I had started moving into my head, and my body was left without the energy, depleted. This happened especially if the person who I was talking with had little presence themselves. If I pushed it and still talked, like I did a few times, the damage to my energy would go beyond depletion.

For example one time I overdid talking on a phone with someone (they actually tried to listen and be supportive, and they were helpful intellectually, but not on a level of presence), the conversation was about an hour and after that I felt unanchored even more (very little energy in my feet and lower parts of my body), my breath became shallow, I felt some kind of jamming sensation in my head, and felt like I am not present in the here and now, and fog in the head. It felt like my whole energy field became reduced, and it felt like I was regressing, almost as if I was going back in time, and started feeling how it was like to have a consciousness before the expansion, an old consciousness that is mainly focused on physicality.

This happened a few times, and then I stopped interacting with people one on one for a period of time completely. I also realized that sharing about my expanded consciousness experiences with Small Energy people is not useful and can even be damaging for them and for me. So now when my friends and relatives ask, or express concern, I try to share in general terms and using common language.

Also, instead of interacting one on one, I tried to socialize in the groups of people a few times, and it worked well. For example, when I met for a birthday gathering with old friends, it felt good. The conversation around the dinner table was superficial and disperse enough so I could relax and just be with people without participating much.

Only now, in the past two weeks I started re-connecting with people more for a short periods of time, and several times I was not able to hold on to staying present, but other times I was capable of doing it. For example, when I recently talked with someone with whom I have a good relationship, but he has low energy in his lower part of the body, I was worried, at first, if I would be able to sustain being in my own energy and presence, but I was able to do it well.

I used the practices like pacing the conversation (not speaking too fast or too much), using common language, staying connected to the breath, and it worked well. It was not too difficult to do these practices and I did not lose presence or mirror another person’s energy. So, we were even able to have an authentic pretty deep conversation, which included processing what is going on in our lives. This was a Skype conversation. I also saw some similar improvements with several other people as long as I was doing these practices during the conversation, or as long as other person had a strong and well-balance presence.

However, currently I still feel affected by the energies of others, which greatly diminishes my well-being and working capabilities. For example, when I interact with the kitten (especially through touching), I start noticing that I am being pulled into smaller and body-oriented consciousness. With a cat, I first thought that this pull towards feeling my body might be healing, but every day I am observing that it does not feel good, it feels as if my body becomes uncomfortably opaquer (as opposed to comfortable expanded fullness, aliveness, and grounding), especially this sensation is strong in my spine.

It feels that my spine is shrinking, which is uncomfortable and again reduces my energy fields, clarity of thought, etc. This shrinking in the spine and body opaqueness also feels as if my consciousness shrinks. I can start feeling heavy, out of breath, slight nausea, dizziness, suppression, as if I am losing the ease and the lightness of being, also as if I am becoming less spiritually vibrant.

This similar dynamic sometimes happens when I interact with Small Energy people in my daily life. Later at night when I am sleeping, I am sometimes aware that my consciousness comes back to more expanded, but I am afraid that if I interact with the world too much and will be affected by others’ energies too much, one day I will not be able to come back to the expanded mind-body state.

Overall, these sensations and changes in the way I can be with people and even pets are shocking, unpleasant, and do freak me out. I will explain the “freak outs” below.

So, I have a hard time understanding and deciding if I need to postpone and limit interactions with others, and maybe not have a cat, until I re-integrate the part of myself that gives me anchoring in my own presence and body, and until I spend enough time in the field of ultimate reality (not being focused on forms) without distractions for some time.

I have also heard from Sadhguru that when the crown charka becomes open in a person, their consciousness is no longer physically oriented in a way that it was before the opening, and the body becomes somewhat fragile. In my experience I would agree, since the body feels somewhat porous. So, I am not sure if these sensations are the new norm now, and if so, whether I need to adjust or limit my interactions with people and animals based on that, and I am not sure what this adjustment entails.

I am also not sure if such porousness is due to my energetic trauma from the Summer, or due to awakening, how long it’s going to last, and if there is something else pertaining to this porousness that would be useful or necessary to be aware of.

AMARA:  Please give me a few specific examples of what you mean by freak-out reaction …and what did you mean by shocking sensations and difficult decision

READER: The freak out reaction to shocking sensation and difficult decision is probably best captured with the issues around the pets. For example, (this happened when I still had tons of energy in my body) when I was at a pet shelter to get a dog for my dad, and it was time for me to meet the dog in an area outside. I saw the dog walking from far and felt numerous intuitions and energetic sensations happening all at once. I did not perceive these on a regular human level and emotionally, but energetically and spiritually only, and very intensely. So, I was very confused as to what is going on and took the dog that was not a good fit (for me and my mom. The animal is only a great match for my father).

So difficult sensations were:

a) rapid decrease of energy in my body, my field, and above the head;
b) an unusual sensation that the dog and I do not match too well in terms of our essence energies
c) a pain and jamming of energy around my heart
d) also the spiritual perception of the dog’s good spirit and love

I override all these sensations, thinking that it’s just because the dog was too stressed out in the shelter, and, since I sense that he has a good loving nature, I took him. But then, even several months later when the dog recovered from stress, when I was visiting my parents, I felt the same problems in my energy system when I was around the dog.

These energetic discombobulations, rapid diminishing of energies, and what felt like I am losing consciousness, continued. I also smelled the dog so very strongly, it’s even hard to explain how strongly, and the smell went directly into my lungs in the most disturbing way. I knew that big energy changed my physiology a lot, but with other intensified smells I was comfortable, even liked it, but it was very different with the dog; it was too much to handle, and I did not even realize that it was too much to handle.

The allergy and coughing were intense as well, but I thought I could manage it with medication, as people around me recommended, and it worked some. Then the issue continued, even when I was at my home, I felt that I could not stop thinking of the dog and how disturbing these sensations were when I was around him, then I started perceiving that I was a cat in the previous life, and I was chased and torn to death by some dog.

This perception was very strong, shocking, and overwhelming, but brought clarity to me about what was going on. I put things together and realized that I was in huge fear of my dad’s dog, even panic. I did not recognize it at first because I felt it on an energetic level, not a regular panic level, and because I also felt a lot of love for the dog despite all these energetic incompatibilities. He is also on his best behavior, a very loving and affectionate animal, and really small, so I was confused.

But I did not realize these things in time, and now my father and the dog are attached to each other, and I am concerned that it would be traumatizing for both of them to take the animal away.

So I started feeling trapped in this situation, and the freaking out that happened (and still does occasionally) could be described as obsessive thinking, not being able to stop focusing on the dog when I am around him or not, increased anxiety overall, worrying that panic attacks would come back, worrying for my health and that my post-awaking sensitivities will overwhelm me, feeling upset that my connection with the dog is off, especially since he is a great loving animal, feeling confused and ruminating about how to resolve the situation, feeling irritated that I cannot relax when visiting my parents and enjoy our time together, feeling guilty for not listening to my intuition and signals from the energy that were going on from the beginning, and causing all this calamity myself, worrying that if I have to take the dog away if my panic grows, I will traumatize my dad and the dog.

This is an example of a difficult decision with which I feel stuck, not sure if it’s wiser to relocate him to a different family while he is still young or if it’s wiser not to do it. All of this “freaking out” is kinda like a bug in my mind, and where before the awakening such mental states were not affecting my energy as much, now it does in a big way. So, I feel like I need to get out of this “freaking out” mental state faster, but somehow, I cannot.

The decision with a cat also became a difficulty, just like with a dog, because I love the kitten, and feel a very special connection with her, but I am not sure if I need to keep my daily living space just to myself and stay in stillness, at least for some time now. These decisions about how close I can be with people and animals, and especially if they need to be in my everyday living environment now, became problematic, because I feel that this awakening process is an unfamiliar territory for me, and a very rough one so far.

In addition to anxiety of making a mistake with decisions, a freak out reaction to this new territory is also sadness of losing my familiar and “normal” way of being. It is sadness because I cannot engage with old friends like I used to, or enjoy touching and being with pets, which used to bring me so much joy in the past.

AMARA: You referenced a fear that you will miss the bigger calling for your life or a bigger purpose for your life — what do you mean by bigger purpose or calling?

READER: I feel that the bigger purpose for me is anchoring spiritual energy in my body, in other words embodying my spiritual, energetic essence, and while doing that still remain a part of society (not retreat to a total seclusion or monastic living).

I am not sure if it is possible for me to anchor the big presence that was given to me right after awakening, and likely that amount is way too much for me. But I am still called to regain the wholeness, anchor the spiritual energy, especially in the lower base of my body and in a dantian, and then live out of that state of integration and connection with the Spirit (God, my Higher Self, etc.)

Post awakening, I am called to spend more time in meditation, breathing, and feeling that I am one with the breath. My focus has turned inward so much and inner harmony always feels like a priority. Yet, I do not feel that that’s the only purpose for me. I am also called and hope to come back to work and continue working from a more rooted, in-depth presence place.

Similarly, I feel called and hope to create a family and be a partner and a mother, also from that deeper place. But really, the type of work and my personal life is not of the main importance, as I realize more and more lately, what is more important is being in the world, in whichever way that I am useful and guided, while embodying my spiritual essence and integrating post-awakening changes more skillfully.

AMARA: You mentioned frequent spurs of despair. What exactly is at the root of this despair…what is the story that gives structure to it?

READER: The root of despair is the thinking that I might not be able to recover after all this post awakening challenges, which I feel have been traumatizing for me, and that I do not have the skills, and resources within me to be able to live with this post-awakening “upgrade.”

Psychologically I became more fearful and energetically torn apart. I am also exhausted. I have been working on gaining greater states of embodied presence and integration all my life. This took a lot of focus and work, and dedication, yet sometimes it feels like I was better off at the starting point (I know it’s not true at the soul level).

But on a human level, at least back then I was functioning, and studying and working full time, and having a great group of friends, and dating. But now, I am utterly exhausted from all the pre-awakening and post awakening challenges, not being able to socialize well, not being able to work, or even live in my own house because of these energetic traumas and sensitivities, etc.

I am not even sure in which direction to move forward, and what to aspire anymore. I used to aspire towards greater wholeness, spiritual growth, and as a result improved helping capacities at work, and improved personal relationships.

Yet, so far, instead of an easier, more enjoyable life that I was working towards, I am dealing with traumas, incredible sensitivities that limit my functioning and relationships, even with the pets which I love. It feels like a dead end, like a loss of a “normal” life. I try to think that all of this is temporary and that I will adjust to a new way of being, but it’s hard, the new territory feels dangerous, and often times I just do not know how.

AMARA: You mention that falling into emotions is physiologically uncomfortable. What emotions are you falling into? 

READER: For example, after the big energy became unanchored and I was in great pain especially physiologically, all I did was lie in bed for several months, isolated because of my sensitivities, except rare check-ins with my relatives. In addition, I was still having these perceptual shifts, such as not being able to use the word “I”, or talk about myself, or listen to music, or even pray in the way that I used to. If prayed like I used to prior to awakening, such prayer would be incongruent with my new realizations, and would discombobulate my energy even more, causing even more physiological pain.

Books, podcasts, and movies were not an option as well, because my sensitivities were such that it was not tolerable. I thought I was going to lose my mind, because I was almost completely cut from the human world, and even my usual internal ways of coping with challenges (music, prayer, etc).

During this time, I felt occasionally that I cannot take it anymore, and started crying, which immediately made me feel sick physiologically and energetically even more, so I had to stop. I was really at a loss how to express my pain.

I could not start thinking negatively, could not complain because my words would have an immediate strong effect on my energy, could not cry, could not pray in a human way. So, I figured out how to pray energetically, and was holding on to the wordless ultimate reality of love that was available to me despite all the pains and isolation. I also learned how to let the tears come out and still remain in peaceful, loving, and positive mind state. I am still mastering this, and learning which other practices I can do, which would be tolerable at this time, such as painting, etc.

After the crisis passed, I started falling more into the emotions of fear and anxiety, and despair. Fearing that I will not recover, or master living with such sensitivity, that I will not be able to get to the point of enjoying my life free of what seems like never-ending energetic problems.

A concrete example is anxiety that my sensitivities are so out of control that I cannot tolerate being in certain spaces or around certain people at all, even my house. This is very unsettling as I never know when these sensitivities and limitation might happen. It happened so rapidly with my house that I had to go live in the basement immediately without the ability to be in a house for more than a few minutes. It’s been about a month, and sensitivities did go down some, but still not house entry for me. I am not sure how long this will last or what else similar to this might happen and when, which adds to the anxiety.

If I fall into these states of anxiety, again, it has an immediate effect on my energy: anxiety and fear discombobulate the energy and reduces the energy’s presence in my lower parts of the body, and despair keeps breaking the energetic flow around the heart area.

Confusion and uncertainty with decisions also adds to anxieties and energetic disorganization.

AMARA: Please clearly list what you lost when the Big Energy departed.

READER:

Wholeness
The power of presence
My strength
My grounding base
The gift that was given to me by a Creator
The opportunity to embody my spiritual essence well
The opportunity to progress spiritually on a different level: explore other perceptions
The enjoyment of being alive, because the body felt so great: a sense of pleasantness, health, and well-being in my body; even much better physical appearance
Effortless and pronounced loving, peaceful, and joyful mind-body states
Life force energy to do things with ease, clarity, and efficiency
Blissful states
Motivation and a sense of direction in life
Protection against the states of fears and anxieties
A shield against being affected by the energies of others
A greater more in-depth possibility to interact and learn from Big Energy people

I know I still have the access to many of these points listed, but the access is not as easy now, and sometimes very hard.

Also, the big energy, though, I know it is my own essence, it also felt like it was very alive on its own and had its own consciousness, so when I had it in my body, I felt like I was nurturing a living Being which lived inside me. So, when I lost it, it almost felt like I lost that precious alive Being.

AMARA: You wrote: I focus on that, and the present moment, and living one step at a time, dropping the desire for things to be different, when I catch it arising in me, which is often.

What, exactly, do you desire? 

READER: To feel wholeness/integration within my own being again
and for my inner embodied state to stabilize not to have constant unexpected energetic changes, shifts, breakages, and other often unpredictable challenges and sensitivities.

For my life to stabilize on a practical level:

Being able to live back in my house, being able to work, socialize with greater ease
I also want to have a relationship, create a family and have children, when things stabilize
And it would be really nice to feel like I am living in my own energy stream, my own life, which I imagine as including the above points and also being surrounded by people (at least the closest ones) and being in places that are compatible with my essence energy.

AMARA: What is your therapist’s professional opinion about your current state of disability? 

READER: Her opinion is that it is anxiety (which escalated especially lately), depression, and trauma symptoms.

I also see a psychiatrist, and his diagnosis is the same. Trauma symptoms, not PTSD because there was no concrete traumatic event, which is required for the PTSD diagnosis. And, of course, I can’t share with my psychiatrist about the awakening, and the unechoing of energy, which I feel was traumatic.

I do take medication: small doses of antidepressants (my body would not tolerate larger doses), and antianxiety meds (I used to take them as needed, but more regularly now). I also want to discuss with the psychiatrist about possible medication, which can help reduce the sensitivity (antidepressants do that to some extent).

AMARA: You wrote: I would be very grateful for your outside perspective and maybe some message on how to recover and sustain the gains.

What do you feel are the “gains” exactly?

READER:  Regaining and sustaining energetic wholeness, and stability: Maybe reintegration of some of my energy parts is needed post summer traumatization (I am not sure if that’s the case).

Also, something in my energy system constantly breaks or disorganizes, either the energy flow around the heart area, or not enough energy in the lower parts of the body (after the summer), or the energy becomes discombobulated. It would be nice to not have these breakages, but feel more energetically solid, stable, stronger.

Develop skills on how to function better in the world (handle sensitivities to the house, pets, socialize without being affected by other’s energies, which can hopefully help get back to working and dating with time). Maybe daily practices might be needed, or changes to the living environment and lifestyle, etc.

Develop greater skill in how to get to and live in “my own energy stream” and embody my own energy essence with greater ease.

STRAND Answer

Having a profound spiritual experience can feel like a bright light has suddenly illuminated your life.

Imagine your life as a large room that’s always been dark, and suddenly a brilliant light comes on and you can see everything so clearly, things you didn’t even know were there. 

You see a chest of jewels, sparkling light reflecting from perfectly cut facets, and colors you’ve never known before. You see picture books filled with images and stories from past lives. You see a window you never knew was there, and you open it and feel the exquisite freshness of the night air. You see and feel so many things, and it’s like your small known world has suddenly expanded a hunded fold. 

But…it’s still just your room. 

And for some time, what completely occupies your attention is everything that’s new to you, everything you haven’t known or experienced before. It feels like The Everything, like life is totally new and different. Like you are totally new and different. 

But it’s still your room. The same room. And all those “new” things were always there in your room, it was just too dark to see them clearly. And guess what else is in your room? All the old stuff. 

Nothing has been added and nothing has been removed just because the light has come on. The light didn’t automatically remove pre-existing mental health issues, maladaptive coping mechanisms, unresolved destructive emotional patterns and so on. 

The light turned on, and you can suddenly see things clearly, but that doesn’t mean you know what you’re looking at.

The light is on and you can see the shape and texture and movement of things, but you are still guessing at what they are. You’re making assumptions about what they are, what they mean and what significance (if any) they have. 

Just because you can see doesn’t mean you know. Seeing and knowing are not the same, but it’s a common error we make. We get a microscope and we can now see clearly tiny life forms that have always been present yet we never knew were there…but that doesn’t mean we know anything about what we are seeing. 

Instead of realizing this, we start making assumptions about what we are seeing or experiencing. And we believe our assumptions because we’ve mistaken the ability to see (perceptual acuity) with understanding. 

You’ve been framing everything as energetic and spiritual. What if they’re not? 

You use a lot of spiritual language to describe things you are experiencing. You’re assuming that’s the best framework to understand them. What if it’s not? 

What if you’re assuming they are spiritual/energetic/etheric? For ten days, try to avoid framing any of your current or past experiences in this way — are there other ways to interpret and know these experiences? 

For instance, you were in a long term codependent romantic relationship and your recent breakup was traumatic. Can you connect with and describe your feelings without using ideas such as an energetic breakage in your heart? 

You describe having “slips” where you were sloppy with your attention and consequently had to “recover and bring myself back into balance, aligning all my subtle bodies (mental, energetic, etc.) in one direction again and again, and readjusting myself into a state of harmony” — can you remove all the spiritual language and filters and frame this in a different, perhaps even mundane way? 

In other words, is there any other way to describe and understand your troubles — aside from assuming they are all spiritually or energetically based? 

I know such intense experiences can be really disorienting. And one of the hardest things to do at a time like this is to just be practical and ordinary.

Grounding is something you do energetically, sure. But it’s also something you do emotionally and mentally. If you’re just trying to ground energetically without becoming emotionally and mentally grounded, how is that going to work? That’s only one out of three bodies you need to ground. 

Emotional Grounding

Bring your emotions into the center. Give yourself space to acknowledge them, explore them, talk about them and feel them. Not as “energetic wounds” or karmic this and that. These frameworks are just ways to separate yourself from the raw, alive and messy feelings you have. Yes, you have them. So honor that and don’t try to spiritualize or intellectualize them. 

If your feelings are overwhelming, maybe they’re not normal feelings. For instance, when a person has panic attacks they experience all these heightened sensations and what they call feelings, but these are not normal emotions — they are pathological states. 

Learning to distinguish between your true emotions and pathological states is a good start. Emotions, no matter how difficult, need to be recognized and felt — and if they are very intense, you can get support for that. Pathological states are different, and they require professional treatment. 

Mental Grounding

Your life is in chaos and while you may be focused on not being “sloppy” with your attention (more spiritual focus), what you likely need more than that is to start utilizing common sense, practicality, rationality and objectivity. 

You are understandably distraught over not feeling you can trust your intuition, since it has led you to make some bad decisions. I know how confusing and terrifying that feels. But how about leaving off on the intuition and start leaning into some practicality? With your life in such upheaval, was it really the right time to get a kitten in the first place? Cats can live for 20 years — what made you think you were in a position to make a 20 year commitment to be the guardian of another life when you cannot even manage the basics of your own, single life? When you are going through immense changes? Is that really the time? 

That’s just realistic. That’s the grounded mind, stepping in to say hey, let’s think this through. Where was your mind whilst your intuition was taking you for a ride? You say Life gave you a cat, but did it?

You’re the one who went to the shelter and made the decision to adopt a kitten. It’s not like a starving stray kitten walked up to your doorstep asking for a home. You are not a passenger or a passive agent in your life, but you will continue to feel and act as if you are if you persist in over-spiritualizing and using that to keep life at a kind of arm’s distance.

Let’s be clear: Life presents you with options and limitations and you make decisions and choices and take actions. You.

Your problem isn’t that you can’t trust your intuition, it’s that you never should be making these kind of decisions based only on your intuition. Just because you had a spectacular spiritual experience does not mean you are now exempt from having to reason things out when making decisions. 

Part of being able to trust your intuition is knowing the proper place of intuition. You are over-spiritualizing and expecting your intuition to do the heavy lifting in situations where you should be using other tools. But it’s just too easy to make the error of believing these common, mundane tools like emotional intelligence and grounded reasoning and common sense are no longer needed after you’ve experienced bliss and oneness and touched the Source. 

You didn’t use your head. It’s as simple as that. And instead of seeing that this was the error, you go around in mental circles chasing the why and what does it mean and was I given this cat for this reason or that reason? You had bad judgement — it’s very mundane, very common. Also, people make poor decisions around adopting pets all the time. But you are very busy spinning out all kinds of special meanings about it — all whilst ignoring the obvious.

And this is a pattern that repeats in other areas of your life. Your mind is in overdrive spinning out useless spiritual and exotic reasons and explanations and meanings.  

So, what if you decided not to do that, to refrain from doing that? What if you decided to employ your keen observation skills to notice when you are doing that, catching yourself when you are doing that and stopping — for ten days.

NO spiritual meanings and reasons and explanations. No spiritual explanations for your anxiety, depression, obsessive thinking, difficult emotions, decisions and choices, panic attacks, suicidal feelings. No spiritual veneer whatsoever. For ten days. 

Why ten days? Well, I’d like you to make it a regular practice until you are well again, but it may seem overwhelming to make a long term commitment, so just do it diligently for ten days and see how that goes. It seems a manageable span of time to give it your best try. 

Spirituality can be ungrounding. What started out as radical clarity of perception can be the very thing that keeps you from understanding.

Because as I said, being able to suddenly see what was unseen doesn’t automatically come with the ability to understand it.

I can see, but I may not be clearly understanding what I see. Make this statement and see if it shifts your center of gravity a bit.

When you have what you interpret as a Big Deal spiritual experience, you can come to believe that is what you are — and you stop feeling and being connected to your “small” self, as though that bright light of awareness eliminated your ordinary mind, feelings and persona forever. It may seem so for a while, but you eventually adjust to this light and what you find is most likely all these elements of  your human self are still present — only you’ve been neglecting them while you were dazzled by all the bright lights, new perceptions and experiences.

The most awkward and useless thing is to keep pretending these ordinary aspects of being (everyday emotions, persona, desires, thought patterns) are not important, and that Spirit is what matters. Especially since that very penetrating bright light has most likely illuminated lots of old patterns, programs, unresolved emotions, junky habits, fears and mental health issues that you might have been able to keep somewhat under control before.

But now they are noisy and hungry and keep breaking out of their cages! So what are you going to do?

Correctly identifying your problem is the first step to seeking a solution that will actually work.

If your arm is broken, I urge you to go to a doctor first and then do your prayer and energy healing later. If you can’t start your car, you need a mechanic, not an exorcist. 

You had a profound experience, and now you define your life and all other experiences around it. But is this giving you an accurate, useful view of your life? You said your awakening happened in the winter of 2020, yet you later describe your intense struggle as going on for the past five years. So clearly you had issues prior to this spiritual experience.

You were struggling. Then you had a massive spiritual experience that seemed to reprieve some of that struggle. You felt bliss and wholeness and as you say, Big Energy. Then you started having difficulties, didn’t handle it well and the Big Energy left. Now you are struggling worse than before, perhaps worse than ever. 

You have a prior history of anxiety, panic attacks, relationship difficulties and you mentioned a “karmic pattern” of not wanting to be alive anymore. If you remove the overly spiritual language, we can just call that suicidal ideation, because I don’t know if you took action on these feelings or not. You also had some destructive “coping mechanisms” — which resurfaced after your spiritual experience and wreaked havoc on your family and yourself.  

This is not to insinuate that you were somehow just out of control prior to your spiritual experience. You had friends and family and a career you loved. You had a life that worked. I get it. But what I’m saying is that you had some underlying issues and mental health vulnerabilities, and going through this massive spiritual experience may have triggered some of these issues which now plague you. Only you are describing them as having a spiritual nature, and therefore seeking a spiritual remedy. 

You mentioned seeing a therapist and a psychiatrist, and that you are taking some meds that have been helping. Only, you have chosen not to tell the psychiatrist the whole story. This is a very personal choice and I fully understand why you would make it. However, I will point out that your doctor is giving you medication based on a diagnosis…based on incomplete information. 

This is significant and I’d like you to honestly consider the seriousness of your choice. If you are against sharing full information with your current doctor, I wonder if you couldn’t seek a second opinion from another psychiatrist — tell them the whole story and then hear them out. You don’t have to do anything based on their recommendation — that’s up to you — but at least hear what kind of diagnosis they give you and what their recommended treatment would be. 

Doctors cannot be expected to properly treat a patient when they are not given all the pertinent information. You are aware that you need psychiatric help and even accept pharmaceutical treatment, but how can you be sure you’re getting all the help you need, or the best help you can get, if your doctor is only given half the story? 

You found my website and the way I recount my experience feels familiar to you, you recognize your own illumination and subsequent struggles in my writing. You’re already biased toward believing your symptoms are spiritual and not pathological, you already framed it that way. Then you read accounts on spiritual blogs or from spiritual influencers and it seems like a match.  

If there was a website where you could read the first hand accounts of people who are suffering from, say, bipolar mania — who also feel they are having a spiritual awakening, and their subsequent troubles — would you be surprised to find their accounts also match your own experience quite closely? 

Two people very close to me had such experiences, incredible experiences with undeniable Kundalini activations. And within a few months, they started crashing, the inevitable corresponding downswing after such manic highs. The lows were brutal, excruciating and disabling. They were devastated, and so confused, because they had framed their initial experience as true spiritual awakening rather than the effect of a manic episode. That hurts, deeply, uniquely. It feels like you’ve been cast out of Eden.

Am I suggesting you’re bipolar or that the experience you call awakening was a manic episode? No. And I have no qualifications whatsoever to speak to any potential medical condition. But you asked for an outside perspective, and I’m giving it to you.

I’m saying you are biased to look at your situation through a spiritual framework and, may I add…it’s not really helping. You read spiritual blogs and get advice that helps a little, feels familiar and recognizable, but really…if I told anyone, just picked a random person off the street and counseled them to be very mindful of their thoughts and focus…wouldn’t that be generally helpful? 

You have these so called insights or intuitions, but are they? Are they helping you…because if not, what good are they? For instance, how does the insight that you were a cat in a previous life and you were ripped apart by dogs help you?

I mean, in previous lives you were many things and you suffered and died in so many ways — so by that logic everything, every experience could be traumatic. In all animal lives you were killed in some horrible way because animals in nature don’t die peacefully of old age. In previous human lives you suffered all manner of brutality and violence, from men, women, animals, horrible illness and physical afflictions. You died by fire, by the knife, by strangulation. You were a malformed baby and you were exposed to the elements to die. You drowned. So how useful or truly, how meaningful is it to have this past life insight into why you are having panic attacks when you’re around your dad’s dog? 

But you are biased toward believing these insights and uncritically give them significance, when just by the vivid description of your symptoms, a doctor would probably give you a much more meaningful and useful diagnosis and treatment. 

I am suggesting you make space to step outside your bias, outside your framework, and look at your entire experience from different perspectives. It can be from a mental health perspective, or even another one, just regain some objectivity so you can truly investigate what your problem is rather than sticking with your predisposition to believe it’s spiritual and going around in circles. You said it very well…you feel like you’re at a dead end. And I’m suggesting your bias toward this one framework and explanation is that dead end.

It’s not either or. You can have an intense spiritual experience and then have mental health crises. 

One does not necessarily invalidate the other. You can have an authentic spiritual experience and that huge energy can trigger and worsen existing mental health issues, or even trigger latent ones. 

You already have the sense that what you call Big Energy was quite a bit too much for your system to handle safely. Kundalini is notorious for shredding people’s energy fields if it’s too much. 

Kundalini is unkind.

The sweet and naive idea that you are only given what you can handle is nonsense when it comes to Kundalini. So perhaps this situation is a Kundalini activation that was too much for your system, and that triggered a series of mental health crises. 

In this framework, the initial “cause” is indeed spiritual — but what follows is psychiatric, medical. And if you keep trying to find only spiritual solutions, those solutions will be minimally effective. And maybe the psychiatric symptoms will start to recede on their own eventually, as they do in episodic illness, like bipolar disorder. But that’s really not great either, if you never realized you were having a mental health crisis and continue believing it’s spiritual. Because if it returns, you will once again be looking in the wrong places for treatment. 

It’s good and useful and important to get an accurate understanding of what the problem is. It’s essential. 

So, to your initial question: how to keep the gains while mitigating the negative effects? 

If what you experienced was a Kundalini activation, then…you can’t keep the gains. There is an important distinction between Kundalini activation and true awakening. Sometimes they happen together, but sometimes people have awakening without extreme Kundalini, and so many people have Kundalini activation without a lasting spiritual awakening. 

Kundalini is a spiritual experience. It comes and goes. It reorganizes your energy channels. When it doesn’t exceed your capacity, it either departs after doing this reorganizing or it remains, but settled and at a manageable level. 

If it’s more than you can handle, it kind of burns out your system. I imagine it’s a bit like being struck by lightning. 

Kundalini is experienced as a powerful and intelligent force, taking up residence in your body, for a time. If it’s gone, it’s not something you lost. You didn’t fail to be a proper host for this energy.

Kundalini is not your Higher Self. You did not lose your Higher Self upon its departure or anything like that. It’s like an intelligent force of nature that sometimes will activate, move in your system to either reorganize it beneficially or not (if it’s too strong) and then it goes dormant or settles to a manageable level. 

What it left behind, what you call sensitivities and energetic shredding, may be mental health crises triggered by this enormous energy. If this is true, then once you get proper treatment for those, you will be able to truly know how Kundalini has changed you.

For example, experiencing that expanded consciousness and well being, as you described it, has given you a direct experience of what is possible, even though it wasn’t permanent. You know it is there, you know it is within you — it has gone from something you have read about and believe to something you have experienced and known. 

The place where people get stuck with spiritual experiences is misidentifying them as true awakening and then trying to regain them after they have passed. With true awakening, there is no need because the fundamental change is permanent, abiding. Sure, there can be all kinds of dramatic secondary experiences or some kind of dramatic adjustment phase — these things pass, but those are not the essence of awakening. 

In true awakening, there is no concern of holding onto the gains, no fear of losing your awakening and no fear of contamination by other people’s small selves or lack of presence or indeed, your own errors or as you call them, slips

So if you’re trying to regain the heightened state, you’re basically looking back longingly on a transitory experience that has come and gone — one that was by its nature impermanent. Stop clinging to it, realize and accept it was a passing phenomenon, take practical measures to clear up any mental health and energetic issues triggered by it, and when you are stable you can reassess what the initial Kundalini activation and that experience gave you.

What remains of that experience? What was the gift or the insight? With all the noise and drama of your mental health issues, how can you possibly see this clearly? You’re in a crisis and need to focus on things in order of importance, and you need the clarity to distinguish what your priorities are right now.

The items you shared on your list of things you desire are attainable, once you address your mental health. It’s nothing to do with spirituality. If you want those things, I urge you to stop looking for spiritual answers and focus earnestly on regaining your mental health. 

As for mitigating the aftermath, I think you can already guess that my first and most emphatic suggestion is to stop seeing it as spiritual — even if the initial cause was. The effects may be medical, and so your best start would be to get a full and accurate diagnosis and treatment plan. 

You can experience mental health issues and have a shredded energy body. These are not mutually exclusive. You can deal with one through an honest relationship with your doctor while simultaneously working to heal up and balance your energy field. 

Go full Muggle. 

Until you get your symptoms in hand, I suggest you become as ordinary as possible. Become as practical, pragmatic and rational as you can. I know you are a deep and intelligent person, this is evident — so for a period of time, lean into that faculty and stop reaching for the spiritual, intuitive, energetic and otherwise exotic. Go back to the basics of human functioning and experience. 

When some “expanded perspective” appears, some intuitive knowing or whatever, acknowledge it gently and dispassionately, giving it no weight or meaning whatsoever, not validating or invalidating it — just as you might do for any random thought. And then gently let it go. In this way, or any other similar way (since you have meditated a long time, so you might have some established way to gently let go of obsessing thoughts) you can prevent yourself from attaching to these ideas and giving them weight and momentum. 

Does this mean you will never work with spirituality or your intuition again? No. This is just for the time of energetic and mental healing and stabilization. However, the practice might have longer reaching benefits and you might continue it in some fashion if it helps you keep your energetic space clearer. It may help you in the future to distinguish between what intuitions are actually useful by getting out of the habit of giving priority and focus to intuitions that happen to pop into your awareness. Just because something comes through that channel doesn’t mean it’s important or even true.

There is no benefit to hosting thoughts and ideas that are not useful and either cause detriment, confusion, drama or at the very least just clutter up your mental and energetic space. There are numerous bits of information that might pop up as intuitions in any given moment. A great deal of it is psychic static. Until you become skilled and intentional at using this tool of intuition, you are basically just passively allowing information debris to filter into your awareness, unable to a) control the flow and b) distinguish what is useful or real.

When you are in a mental health crisis, it’s not a great time to start actively working with this tool of intuition, other than just teaching it be quiet for a while. The tool is really amazing and cool and at some point you can really experiment with it. But it’s not a priority so for now I suggest you dial it way down.

While you’re dialing that channel way down, turn up the channels of your basic human emotional intelligence and on the mental channel,  your rational, practical, reasoning mind. Both of these will be disturbed if you’re within a mental health crisis. Start working with these gently and slowly, inviting back your ordinary emotions and feelings, making space for them and giving yourself space to feel them. 

I’m not talking about the very big feelings of despair around not being able to have a normal life. That is valid too. But I’m talking about how you feel about your breakup, how you feel about your family relationships, how you feel about your friendships.

Those are feelings. How about moods? Moods are not emotions, but it’s important to really get to know them. What kinds of moods do you experience throughout your day? What seems to bring them on? 

See if you are more comfortable and able to get into your feelings or moods. Do you really lean into your mood experiences, find it easy to pay attention to them — but maybe find it harder or less interesting to explore and feel your emotions? Or are they about the same? Be an objective observer, like a scientist who wants to become very familiar with the movement of moods and emotions.

Invite your reasoning, objective mind to interact with you when you make choices or have confusing or dramatic experiences. Make space for this input. Consult it. Listen to the tone and feel of it — how is this part of your mind different from the one that produces thought streams or thought loops? Does it sound different, have a different quality? Getting to know and recognize this mental faculty will help you distinguish this mind stream from other dramatic and irrational thought engines that might pop into your awareness. 

As for your feelings of porousness, it sounds like you’ve had your natural boundary powered down. Start to build it back up again, gently, simply. Imagine a bubble around you that has a very strong and impermeable boundary or membrane. You can see through it, but nothing can pass through it.  

Check in with it throughout the day, at first your attention will help it to reestablish — after it’s stable you won’t need to think about it as much. But for now, and some time to come, check in with it, just as you might check in with your breathing intentionally throughout the day. It’s that easy and simple. Just notice. Start when you first wake in the morning and fall asleep with a gentle awareness of it at night.

Inside this bubble is your space. If you prefer to see it as something other than a clear bubble, that is fine. Make it whatever suits you best. Just make it a boundary that clearly delineates your space from the outside world. 

Learn to keep your energy within this space. I know you feel that you are being bombarded with energy from other people, and this may be true. But it’s not like you are passively sitting there. There is some part of you that reaches out, unknowingly perhaps. Imagine part of you flowing out to meld with the other person or information stream — it’s a bit like that. Or, you can see it as extending an antennae or “feeler” out beyond your own personal space.

Learn to keep yourself within this personal bubble space. This takes practice and is subtle, especially if you are unaware that you are an active participant in this feeling of energy intruding upon you. 

You can pet and love your kitten without synchronizing your breath, just pet the cat. This kind of melding of energy might have been fine for you in the past, but you can’t handle it now, so stop it. It doesn’t mean you can’t be loving to your cat. Do you see what I mean here? 

Start noticing where you actually have control, agency. You can’t control everything, and some things will take time and stability and healing. But start noticing what you can and do have an effect on. You have a tendency to reach out and connect with energy — spaces, people, animals…whatever. This may be an entirely unconscious and reflexive way you interact with your environment. And there is nothing wrong with it at all — except now you are in a very unusual phase where your normal boundary is down.

And I want to point out to everyone reading this: even if you have very little in common with the reader who has come to us today with this difficult situation, this one point is important for just about everyone. To a shocking extent, we remain unconscious of the way our internal system “works” — as long as there isn’t a crisis or some dramatic change. But when we go through a really big shift or change (and it doesn’t have to be spiritual in nature), things stop working normally and we have no clue how to even approach fixing it. 

We don’t know the mechanics of our own systems, we don’t know what’s going on “under the hood” so to speak. And when the engine stops working properly, we sit there stranded on the side of the road. 

It’s a really good idea to start learning how your system works and working with it intentionally before you get caught up in the net of some crisis or huge life change. 

So, back to you, my dear reader. Work with this boundary and establish your personal space. It might take some time, because you’ve been through a lot energetically. There are all kinds of things in life that can temporarily mess up your boundary…very mundane things, in fact. When I got my second covid vaccine shot, I was utterly shocked to find my boundary was disabled for some weeks after. I’ve had major disruptions in my boundary after lightning storms. 

Let’s explore this idea of antennae. Please understand I’m not suggesting you have them — like some kind of cricket. But the framework is a good one to work with. So imagine you have some antennae and they come up out of your head. You can have a couple or many. However you visualize this. See them — are they metal like an old radio, or are they like an insect, or maybe soft like a snail? What do they feel like? Just investigate them for a moment. 

Then retract them back into the center of your head. Right to the very center, where they have their base.  Spend some time noticing what that feels like. You’re in your bubble with your boundary, and now you’ve retracted your antennae and they are secure in the center of your head, returned to their home base, resting, quiet. How does this change the way your body feels? Your breath? Your nervous system? 

Now, when you check on your boundary throughout the day, also intentionally withdraw your antennae back to the center of your head. 

Eventually, if you continue to do this and to notice the way it feels when they are retracted vs out, then you’ll become aware even when you’re not checking in because you’ll know by the feeling itself. Rather than going around unconscious of this activity, you’ll have developed awareness and eventually skill, and then after that, if you continue to work with this awareness, mastery. 

And that will serve you long after this crisis has passed. 

Of course we are limited here to just the bare basics, but I hope you will use these basic ideas to build from as you experiment and discover your own mechanics, your tendencies, your own system. 

I know it feels endless and scary and exhausting. It’s easy to slip into despair.

But realistically,  you only just had this huge energetic experience a little over a year ago. You mention you’ve been struggling intensely for five years, so I can only surmise there were other serious problems before (you mention years of turmoil and exhaustion prior to your awakening experience), but if we’re just sticking to this topic of your spiritual experience in the winter of 2020, followed by the aftermath — it’s been a little over a year. And that’s not a long time for such a big adjustment.

Especially if you haven’t been looking in the most effective places for answers because you haven’t been really clear on what the problem is. 

You may feel like you’re at the end of your personal resources, but once you reorient yourself, get the help you need, stop looking back to try to hold onto a spiritual experience that was by its nature transitory, and undertake a gentle discipline to tune your mental and emotional system to a more normal, healthy and balanced focus — things might turn around more quickly. 

You’re smart and strong and have deep, solid roots in Love and goodness. You feel your heart energy is shredded, but your underlying strength is definitely still there — it will carry you once you start your momentum in a more useful direction. 

The thing you look back on — your sense of wholeness — isn’t in the past, it’s somewhere in your future. You got to dance with it for a while, and now you know it’s there. But it’s not something in the past to regain, it’s not limited to the Kundalini movement. And you’ll embody it with more joy and less drama once you take care of the business of your mental health — it’s like getting the house ready for the Honored Guest. 

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