Rising Fire

Settled down. Tucked into bed. At rest feeling the day’s issues slide into the past. Only thinking of the pleasure of sleep. Not considering the troubles that would wake with the dawn. It’s good to rest. To feel the blood in my veins, the air moving in my lungs. Engaged in the symphony of senses.

I thought I was tired when I turned off the light. But now, I find myself quite awake and aware. Aware, but not disturbed. I feel the sheet laying over me. Each point of contact with my skin highlighted now that I was thinking on it. When I shifted my attention to the temperature of the room, I still felt the sheet over me, but the sensation was now background information. My attention shifted again, by my will, from the temperature, to the pillow under my head.

Item by item, sense by sense, I studied what I was feeling, smelling, tasting, hearing, and seeing. Even though I sleep with a sleeper’s mask, I still noted what my optic nerve had interpreted as stimulation. And as I cycled through my senses, changing the focus of study, what I had previously been monitoring would be acknowledged, and released from observation.

At first, it felt like my world was contracting. There was more and more pushed away as I released the subjects of my observations, with less and less of me left to observe. Yet, when I ran out of input to process, I found it was the external world that had shrunken, as I had grown to become part of it all. I was both the body under the sheet, and the sheet that lain over it. I was the act of breathing, and the air that moved with the act. My eyes were blinded, yet I saw the room from all perspectives at once. I was nothing, and I was everything.

I remained in that state for some time, I think. It felt like a few seconds. It felt like a few hours. I didn’t know, time no longer mattered. Some when, I made a decision. Instead of the blissful merging of within and without, I would focus my awareness on my body. I would look within. The decision established the division of Me from Not-Me immediately.

I breathed, but I was no longer the air that moved. The sheet was once again external to my sense of self. I breathed, and noted not the air, but the action of breathing. The delicate choreography of muscles contracting and relaxing to open the lungs. The swirl of blood in the alveoli subtly changing hue as oxygen and carbon dioxide are exchanged. The swiftness of the now brightened blood flowing through increasingly large channels towards the heart.

I watched, but was not moved by it. I felt the different biological systems of my body interacting with each other, in all the wondrous splendor, but felt no emotion about it. Eventually, even the observing of my physical world failed to keep my attention. I released all foci of attention, and just rested in being.

The disturbance started with a vibration, where no vibration should emanate. I was laying flat on my back, my hands laying to my sides in no determined way. The vibration was at first, a barely registered tickle, that grew to an impossible hum. How my tailbone region was capable of humming completely escaped me. Without moving, my awareness focused on the hum, feeling it grow stronger in intensity. With the hum came a sense of heat. As if someone had lit a candle, and was holding it directly under my coccyx.

A quick check of my other senses could not corroborate the idea my bed was on fire. If my ass was aflame, then other parts of my body should also be aflame. But my hands and feet were merely warm from body heat. My head awash in cool air from the open window. But still, the heat intensified.

I thought to move, to shift position. Perhaps I was laying on something, and was misinterpreting the pressure as heat. As quickly as I thought of it, the thought left unfulfilled. A deep instinct telling me if I moved, I would stop the process.

I was feeling a sound where no sound should emanate. The heat increased even as it focused. Just when I thought I could bear it no further, the sensations began to move. The vibration shifted first, moving up my spine as if it was the mercury in a thermometer. It moved slowly at first, picking up speed as it progressed. When it reached the midpoint corresponding to my heart, it shot up into my skull with such a ferocity I wondered if I was being electrocuted. My extremities danced a brief jig as the vibration rattled throughout my body before confining itself into the full length of my spine.

Fully immobilized by the tasering effect, I could only watch with my mind’s eye as the heat concentrated in my coccyx began to swirl in my body. From the vantage point of the skull, the heat turned widdershins around the tailbone. Slowly at first, it rotated causing waves of heat to wash through me. I felt two rotating spots where the heat was more intense. These spots began to advance up my spine, but remained connected to the heat mass at the coccyx. In my mind’s eye, they looked like two snakes slowly emerging from the same barrow, twirling around my spine as they rose.

I’m still immobilized by the vibrations. A few emotions are returning to me. Curiosity. And fear. I know this, I think. I should know what is happening. I’ve read about it a few hundred times in a few thousand blogs. But the names and labels escape me. Instead, I am captivated by the unchecked advance of the serpentine heat. I feel the fear burned away by the heat, replaced with acceptance. My curiosity, my desire to know is also burned away by the heat. In its place is a calm detachment.

Kundalini. The word lept to mind the moment I stopped reaching for it. But the meaning of the word escapes me. There is only the inaudible hum of the entrapping vibration and the steady advance of the twin extensions of heat. I lose contact with more of my body as the heat advances. The vibrations start to intensify. I feel on the verge of a seizure. A sense of trembling overtakes me even though my body is quite still.

The serpentine heat stops. There is a blockage. The same spot where the advancement of the vibrations increased is now where the heat cannot pass. I feel it gather as the cauldron at my coccyx is still pouring heat up my spine. The vibrations increase. The hum deepens in tone as it increases in loudness. My body is beginning to tremble, waves of shivering washing over my extremities. I turn my mind’s eye to the location, at the level of my heart, but I see nothing physically that would impede the serpents.

I realize then, the impediment is of myself. Some fear or contrived notion is preventing the Kundalini serpents from advancing past my heart. As I ponder, the heat is still collecting. It is focused now, burning at my spine, searing at the blockage I can not see. The electric vibrations become to great. I lose control over what little of my self that had remained free. I feel my eyes starting to roll in my head as my tongue gets caught between chattering teeth.

Many years ago, I had the pleasure of having aflame plastic drip onto my leg. A moment of carelessness as I was sealing the end of a cut rope with a lighter. In seconds, I had manually gouged out the still flaming drop from my mid-thigh, while calmly calling for water. The heat gathered beside my heart, knotting around my spine was several magnitudes greater than that solitary aflame plastic drop. I knew if this heat was physical, my body would have cooked from the inside out.

And still the heat gathered. It felt like the heart of a blacksmith’s forge. Like the rage of a wronged lover. Here was the fire that drove the sports car engine. Here was the quickened heart of a bomb. Here was the Sun in the act of fusion.

The heat exploded, destroying the blockage. Consuming my awareness in a ball of glory and light and heat. My last sentient memory, feeling the vibrations set my nerves on fire as the seizure make my extremities dance.

A vision of endless stars. No. Not stars. Universes. Scattered around me like suspended droplets of rain. Each pinpoint of light, another existence, another universe.

I am nothing.

I am everything.

I am.

And yet, there is no I.

Air rushing into starved lungs. A bittersweet taste in my mouth. My pillow is soaked with sweat. My muscles ache and burn with heightened body heat even as I curl up feeling horribly cold inside. I pull off the sleeper’s mask, or rather, finish the askew mask leaving my face and carefully sit up.

My room looks normal. I have the usual post-seizure tells. Nothing is broken, and everyone else in the house is sleeping. I was supposed to remember something.

Kundalini.

Oh yea, that’s it. I’ll look it up in the morning, I guess.

I lay back down, confused by my memories, and go back to sleep. Or try to. As soon as I am comfortable, the memory of what happened comes rushing back. I jot down some notes, and do succeed in going back to sleep. I did dream another dream, but that’s another post.

In the mean time, I have yet another puzzle to solve.

Make of that, what you may.