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Dr Dorothy Walters – Unmasking the Rose

 The year was 1981. I was sitting in my living room on an elm lined street in Kansas, reading a book that made passing reference to a phenomenon I had heard of but knew almost nothing about.

The phenomenon was named Kundalini, said to be a 'snake', that resided at the base of the spine and whose journey upward - instigated through the practice of ancient yogic techniques – would lead, ultimately, to the opening of the crown and even enlightenment. I decided to give it a try. I was in a time of personal crisis, but something inside said that I could raise these energies, even though I had never practiced yoga or meditated or, for that matter, even had a massage. Indeed, I did not even know anyone who engaged in such esoteric pursuits. As a university professor of English and women's studies, I had lived primarily in my head, with virtually no awareness of the inner energies and the life of the spirit they engaged.

I sat quietly in my chair and breathed deeply, focusing on an image of the god and goddess in union in the volume I had been reading. Suddenly I felt a ball of rapturous energy in my lower abdomen. And then, within seconds it seemed, these energies rushed upward into my head.

I felt an influx of ecstatic energy streaming into my skull while my very brain was infused with rapture. As my crown opened, it felt like "a thousand petals unfolding," just as the ancient texts describe. The experience lasted for several minutes, and, as long as I did not think about what was happening, it continued. Suddenly I realized that I was not, in fact, a separate, autonomous, self-individuated being, but merely a tiny spark in a great, indescribable, inscrutable force, the unnamed source of all that is, that which animates and powers the universe in overwhelming love.

I was a fiction I told to myself, a myth I had invented. Finally, I decided to end my "experiment," since I really was not sure what was actually happening to me. But this was not the end of the experience at all. Rather, it marked the beginnings of a long journey, which was sometimes daunting and at other times filled with rapture, one which would take me into realms I had not dreamed of and whose ends I could not foresee.

 What had occurred to me on that now-distant day was "spontaneous Kundalini awakening," prompted primarily by the stress of my immediate psychological crisis and a curious convergence of circumstances. I had been catapulted into a new level of awareness, transformed in a quantum leap of staggering proportions. In Katherine Anne Porter’s phrase, it was truly "the moment that changes everything."