Awakening

Results for the Awakening Trigger poll:

Twenty-five people responded to this poll. Thank you all! :))

To the question:

Q. 1. Did you have a spontaneous awakening, or was it "planned?"

19 replied spontaneous
4 said they were born with K, or it was a gradual awakening
2 said it was more or less planned

Comments such as:
"It wasn't planned, since I had no idea what I was heading for," "not consciously," and "it was not planned in the usual sense...However, looking back, it was implicitly planned into the practice of Yoga in general," were pretty common.

What I find fascinating about this response is that although 19 people said their awakening was spontaneous, twelve of these had practiced meditation either current to the awakening or sometime before it, two others experienced inadvertent shaktipat, and another was triggered in part by Hatha Yoga. All these are "Eastern" practices.
Of the remaining four, one was triggered by LSD, one simply was just sitting and pondering, and two were triggered by falling in love.

Q. 2. What do you think triggered your awakening?
a. Was an "eastern" technique involved? ( i.e. meditation, Hatha Yoga, chanting etc.) and if so which one?

Multiple "triggers" were given by many, but the primary triggers given were:

meditation: 9
Love: 4
born awake 3
Shakipat or Darshan: 3
Loss/Stress: 3
Drugs: 1
"life": 1
one person said he was simply sitting and thinking, meditating on the death of Jesus.

More than 1 trigger is often mentioned. All told:

14 people mentioned meditation
5 said they were born with K or it has been a process
5 mentioned Shaktipat or Darshan
5 mentioned a physical discipline (Hatha Yoga 3, T'ai chi 1 and Chi Kung 1)
5 said they chanted or used a mantra
5 mentioned love or strong emotion
4 mentioned loss or stress
3 mentioned depression
2 mentioned experimenting with drugs

Q. b. Was a strong emotion involved? Love? Fear? Pain? Despair? and if so was prayer involved?

9 people mentioned love or desire as being involved in their awakening
6 people mentioned fear
5 others said they experienced both fear and love at different times
4 people mentioned stress/loss/anger
3 people mentioned despair or desperation
3 people mentioned pain
3 people experienced depression
3 people answered no to the question
1 experienced the feeling of being all powerful
1 universal peace
1 general emotion

Prayer was mentioned by 6

Q. c. Do you think heredity is implicated?

These results were pretty evenly divided:

Ten people said no or don't think so
Eight possibly, maybe, or not sure.
Seven people responded yes or probably

Q. d. Did you have an NDE (Near Death experience)?

16 said no (but 4 of these said K made them fear they were going to die.)
8 said yes.
1 said she experienced something of a spiritual death preceding K.

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I rather suspect we can expect to see increasingly more "spontaneous" awakenings as more and more people make use of these practices for non spiritual reasons--i.e. relaxation and "exercise," and as these practices become more mainstream and part of our daily lives. :))

Excerpts:

Did you have a spontaneous awakening?,
What do you think triggered your awakening?
Was a strong emotion involved?

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had no idea what kundalini was when I awakened. I have been undergoing various k-trips and pranic healing since about 4 years. What started me down this road this year was a meditation I was doing in January. I was just relaxing and letting it flow when I had a vision of a monolithic lingam coming up from the earth. Then a huge female dragon appeared and coiled 3 and 1/2 times around it. Sound familiar? Then she coiled upward to the top and started breathing fire into the sky. I had this overwhelming feeling of power and strength, which was quite exhilirating and frightening. I went with it until I started to think I would be lost in it, and then I snapped out of it. Later that week, my friend and I were listening to the song 'Sister Awake' by the Tea Party. I said, 'Sure makes the kundalini rise, doesn't it?' She asked 'What's kundalini?' I said, gee i Dunno. So i went to a search engine, found elcollie.com and domin8rex.com and the rest is history. Great synchronicity

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Was without a doubt "spontaneous"...it was only months later that I was able to finally able to gain some understanding on what happened (both thru this list and other material that I was guided toward)

For me, it was falling head over heals in LOVE.....and beyond that - it was not something that was appropriate at the time - given my life situation.. so am thinking it was not only the huge emotional changes that I was going through.. but that in addition to having to come to terms with -and- going against what was accepted/expected within my societial/familiar circles.

It's been my impression that K rises in response to breaking past the (perceived) limits of our psyche. (kinda of in keeping with 'god (or whatever term you prefer) comforts the disturbed and disturbs the comfortable'.

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It wasn't planned, since I had no idea what I was heading for.

vipassana meditation.

I remember going through different fears and leaving them behind. Every fear felt like a block I had to go through. I think I forced myself a way through, that caused an awakening that i could not handle then, because the fears where not worked through in a more natural way. Things went fast then, maybe too fast. I confronted every fear I met in myself and went right through inside myself, with my mind. But I could not sustain this situation, so the fears returned after my awakening, only to lessen slowly slowly later on in my life.

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Spontaneous, although shaktipat followed sometime after to help the experience along.

2. What do you think triggered your awakening?
Life, likely :)

a. Was an "eastern" technique involved? ( i.e. meditation, Hatha Yoga, chanting etc.) and if so which one?
Not consciously- but all three mentioned above were used often unwittingly and without knowledge of why or how they worked. After awakening (and some education), they were used consciously and with a more spiritual context.

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I think my k was awake several years before I had shaktipat because I remember feeling a rolling movement up and down my spine. Shaktipat kick started the process into high gear. I had Shaktipat the first week of Novemeber in 91....

I had an initiation into Maharishi's TM meditation when I was 16 but I don't know if that had anything to do with it. I didn't practice it regularly ever and when I did I just spaced out like I was on drugs.

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Can't answer...born with it. More a philosophical question, no?...

Been meditating since childhood, earliest memories I have of it started around age 8. ...

Had a series of *terrible* nightmares at that time of people coming to take me away because I had the gift. That's when I started to notice it. The fire "looked at me"...and I saw it. From then on, I knew I was very different.

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Spontaneous, though I had predicted a cosmic event on this date using Western astrology.

The most beautiful girl I had ever seen put a copy of the Dalai Lama's 'Rite of initiation into the Kalachakra Tantra' into my hands. When I started flipping through, I realized we were spontaneously practicing tantric yoga....

The awakening was instantaneous and I fell in love with the girl.

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Planned. I studied Kashmir Shaivism very aggressively for a couple years. Before that I'd had a couple real traumatic experiences, along with a hairy health issue that pushed me to the brink of death and existence.

2. What do you think triggered your awakening?
Meditation, working w/ shakti/energy flow. Concentrated on opening heart chakra only, and allowing energy to do what it needed.

a. Was an "eastern" technique involved? ( i.e. meditation, Hatha Yoga, chanting etc.) and if so which one?
Kashmir Shaivism - sitting in meditation, working directly w/ teacher. b. Was a strong emotion involved? Love? Fear? Pain? Despair? and if so was prayer involved?
Love, bliss, ecstasy, etc. I'd been getting a lot of the love stuff from bhakti work, but this was a full (read nuclear) opening.

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After doing meditation for about 10 years...I had not heard of Kundalini, nor the process at all....
Meditation, then after the experince being in a conference with a Siddha Yoga Swami, felt for the first time the energy raising quite weird and new, I started meditating with the Siddha Yoga Mantra, OM Nama Shivaya...

For the first 5 or 6 years, joy, cosmic experience, love, connected to nature.- Then the Dark Night of the Soul. Pain, fear, despair, and the void. A long period on the Roller Coaster.. Then the Witness state also for a long period of time. Then I stopped meditation till now.

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It was spontaneous, I had never heard of it before. I had no idea it existed. I just though you mediated to relax....

It was Transendental Meditation that did it, no doubt about that. They don't tell you about it in the pre talks!

No prayer involved. GREAT fear was involved though. I ended up in a Psychratric Ward for a month. Great pain from sounds was involved too. I was put on anti-psychotic drugs and valium. Also I can not pray now as it raises K too much if I do.

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Spontaneous -- was sitting around feeling very gloomy about my seeming inability to love men well, healthily and happily. Boom! The energy shot through my body and I started a 2 week period of "seeing" everything. It felt as though information were being downloaded into me. Any question I posed was answered instantaneously -- about myself and the cosmos.

Triggers -- a series of tremendous losses: L.A. earthquake (my belongings and some damage to the house, my peace of mind), my husband left, mother and best friend both died of lung cancer, etc. Had many transcendent experiences throughout life but it took a lot to finally crack the nut.

Had studied t'ai chi but was not practicing at the time.

No emotion for the first days of all the energy and downloading (except for helpless laughter as I saw the truth). Then much, much bliss.

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it has been a lifetime process of nearly 33 yrs. As a very young child, I was already being prepared, some work was being done and I was strongly guided ; at age 4 the process got it's first little push with the help of an invisible friend: A powerful, warm and loving huge hand touched the top of my head and for a couple of weeks or so I was in a sort of extremely happy/blissfull state

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I literally had a yelling match with God! I stomped around my house screaming I was sick and tired of this earth experience, I didn't want to come back here again, no one loved me and I wanted the answers NOW!!! Kinda a la Bette Midler, y'know? And then...the answers started to appear. The electricity started, the OBE's, the clairvoyance and asking questions and almost simultaneously being led to answers...like to this list! ;-)

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As far back as I can remember, I have had a strong interest in seeing if there's something beyond the material world. This interest turned into an obsession around puberty, and I got into self-hypnosis, ghosts, tarot card reading, holding my breath (never did pass-out), drugs, etc. The actually awakening, however, was spontaneous, and was a lot more than I had bargained for.
...

LSD triggered it. Eastern techniques (Kriya yoga especially) helped channel it properly, but that was well after the fact.

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didnt even know what Kundalini was at the time.
I was pregnant and I had never really meditated or anything in my life and one day after talking to my father in law about out of body experiences I knew I wanted to try one and I bought the book Astral Dynamics and after trying his N.E.W. system to energize and clear chakras I had the first experience and it scared the hell out of me it was so frightning.

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It was spontaneous, although I had symptoms of awakening for several months before the energy surge. I did not know they were related at the time(extreme vertigo, a feeling of being above my body, and cardiac symptoms).

I was mediatating and reciting the Lords' Prayer trying to reach my father in the afterlife.

b. Was a strong emotion involved? Love? Fear? Pain? Despair? and if it was , was prayer involved? Pure love and the Lords' Prayer.
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I was a money manager on Wall. St. (well the Pacific Coast version) ...
...
I met at Harbin a diciple of Muktananda whom and invited him to take a walk...
we climbed Mount Harbin. He looked at me (at my request) in the eyes and a third eye popped out of his head. This happened twice. I was stunned and shocked beyond words. This happened about a year and a third before my awakening. I had no reference for this experience. But he gave me the name of the Muktananda Ashram in Oakland and I got on their mailing list which followed me for 15 years, until I was ready to confront my lineage. (I am thankful for this, since I never would have remembered the name a the time.) ...
One day, on my 15th k birthday I decided to meet these folks whim I suspected were my lineage. Actually Muktananda called me in, he has ways of communicating. I was feeling a need to have a past, some grounding. I had been born again and had no connection to anything earlier than my 15 years and I needed something.

So I went. Upon getting their special mantra, his face appeared to me loud and bright in my third eye. I have never seen anything so clearly in my life, like a hologram. He was looking at me with this haunting, steady, look. Then I knew for sure where my k came from. After that I had a blue pearl sun that exploded into bliss in front of my eyes- a mini-version of the first time. That was his way of saying hello and welcome back.

The energy was so intense though that I could not stay around there without getting more k activity than I wanted. I have had to love him from afar. In time I am connecting more with him. We'll see what happens next. ...
It lasted for many months. Six weeks from the beginning to the crown, where I had the NDE, into the light, born again. But how frightening, terrible....painful, too. I knew I was going to die. I did, I saw my whole life pass before my eyes, and it was a horrifying vision.

Then I went into the light. The light was pure unconditional love. When I came back I was a different person. A walk-in. I've checked this out too over time before coming to this firm conclusion.

(cont.)

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poll:

A list member wrote: I have become curious > what % of members had a spontaneous awakening.

And another replied:

I had a spontaneous awakening, but the trigger I think was falling madly deeply truly in love at age 16. I was in bliss total utter bliss for 6 months as I felt total love and this huge expansion of consciousness - my world literally exploded. It was the most exciting, ecstatic time of my life. Then the bastard dumped me (his phone number was 666 I joke not...) and I plunged into the first of depressions...

Also I had done a small amount of Transcendental Meditation at age 15 (at the suggestion of my mother - I never took to it and didn't do it for long but it may have been some kind of pre-trigger factor)

Dear List,

I'd like to revisit this subject for a new poll.

Question:

1. Did you have a spontaneous awakening, or was it "planned?"

2. What do you think triggered your awakening?
a. Was an "eastern" technique involved? ( i.e. meditation, Hatha Yoga, chanting etc.) and if so which one?
b. Was a strong emotion involved? Love? Fear? Pain? Despair? and if so was prayer involved?
c. Do you think heredity is
d. Did you have an NDE (Near Death experience)?

I'm guessing that it is perhaps a combination of factors that triggers K and it would be interesting to see which ones predominate!

Thanks everybody!