Observations placeholder

When I was gathering my consciousness into the lower abdomen in order to balance ki-energy in my body, so that the energy of the upper part of my body would become evenly distributed, while the lower part would be packed with the energy, I suddenly experienced, after engaging in this practice for less than twenty minutes, a pillar of hot and voluminous fire shooting up from the base of my spine through the central tube of my spinal cord. My entire body was scorching hot, and no sooner had I realized it than my body swiftly became afloat twenty to thirty centimetres in mid-air,, even though I was still assuming a meditation posture.

Although my body was terribly hot and my consciousness was almost hazy, I could clearly grasp the event that was taking place. After ten to twenty seconds, my body descended to the floor with a thump.

For about a week after this experience occurred, I felt my entire body to be extremely hot. This was an experience of awakening the kundalini.

Prior to this practice I had been engaging in 'winter practices' outside in which I poured buckets of ice-cold water over my body. I did this regularly from toward the end of January through to the beginning of February. I recall myself shivering in the dead of the winter because it was cold. Alter pouring many buckets of water, I would stand naked in the cold wintry wind for about an hour while praying to God. My body felt like it was frozen; when I pinched the skin of my body, it was like pinching thick plastic.

However, after awakening the kundalini, l no longer felt cold at all during such 'winter practice', and in fact when I poured buckets of water over my body, I could see white vapors rising from all over the body. I felt good, because my entire body was hot.

After having repeatedly gone through the ecstatic state and the awakening of the kundalini for several months, I became able to receive the flow of God without having to enter into any ecstatic state. Consequently, I came to realize that I could exist out of the body while being elevated to the world of God. Accordingly, I gradually became awakened to the world of the divine self [purusa] through the power of God. This was the awakening of a super-consciousness of the divine self.

(Motoyama, 2008)