The Terror Of A Kundalini Awakening: 2 Years Later
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I’ll never forget the 4th of February, 2018. It was the day that I finally surrendered.
In the days, weeks and months leading up to the 4th, I had plunged into the depths of hell. Despair, apathy, fear and hopelessness engulfed my being.
Here are a few of my Mom’s journal entries on the days leading up to the 4th:
January 28th- Matt is really struggling again.
January 31st- Mike had to take Matt to the ER again today.
February 1st- Matt went to the neurologist today.
February 2nd- I took Matt for an MRI today. He was suicidal, did not think he would live long enough to see the results.
On the 4th of February, as my shocked and worried stricken parents headed to a Super Bowl party for the evening, a deep realization took ahold of me; I could no longer run from this darkness. I had run out of real estate.
Initially this realization overwhelmed me with terror and desperation. If I could no longer run, if I was out of options, then what next? I spent most of my days fantasizing about possible suicide attempts that would provide me a temporary sense of relief because I thought, ‘at least I can get out of this for good if it becomes too much.’
On that day, two years ago, the darkness, the overwhelming and devastating burning energy had become too much.
It was time to overcome it or end it. Two years ago, I knew nothing of kundalini and had self-diagnosed myself with the most insane and intense anxiety that mankind had ever encountered.
The energy relentlessly pulsating through my body and brain, my constantly pounding heart and shaking limbs and repetitive and staggering panic attacks had no other available explanations to me. Kundalini just wasn’t real to me, and the idea of Her terrified my fragile and nearly broken mind.
I remember saying out loud to myself, “Well if this is some intense and insane form of anxiety, then I’m going to learn everything about anxiety that I can.” These were the first empowered words I had spoken or thought in months. Finally, I was not trying to escape what was happening within.
I sat down on the couch, pulled out my phone and read this article. Here’s an excerpt from this blog post that I wrote about what happened next:
Something inside of me clicked. I FINALLY got it. It took me to getting to not being able to take it for one more second to really surrender and to allow all of the emotions and thoughts and feelings to just come rushing up to the surface to be released. I laid on the couch and opened to the feelings and the burning energy and just let it overtake me. I didn't fight how I was feeling. I let the feelings wash through me in all of their intensity. It was then that I realized how powerful I was. I had just openly embraced and faced all of the feelings that I had been terrified of and running from for the last 5 months. I had this unshakable knowing that my life was forever changed. I had finally surrendered. And so, the long road of healing began.
After the elation and euphoria of my deep realization and subsequent surrender wore off an hour or so later, the overwhelming energy, negativity and darkness returned. This time, I fully allowed it, stayed open to it and got in the shower and started shaving.
As I was shaving my hands were shaking uncontrollably and my mind was going haywire with torrents of negativity and darkness storming through it. All the while, I kept myself relaxed and open and kept allowing. At one point, I believed the intensely negative thoughts that told me, “this is just TOO much. There’s no way I can do this,” and put the razor down, considering giving up.
But then I felt in my body the Truth that what ever you fully allow can never be overwhelming, it is only what you resist that can feel overwhelming.
I went back to showering and shaving and fully allowing without believing the thoughts telling me that I should just close back down. After completing shaving and showering I felt a monumental sense of achievement. I had done it, the darkness had not overwhelmed me, for the first time in months I had not been a victim to my inner darkness nor a slave to my negative thoughts.
I felt like I had a new superpower. I had made contact with this ‘Space Of Being’ where I could rest in while all of the negativity, fear, terror and darkness arose in the body and brain. The darkness was often so powerful that it would consume me entirely and find me in my space of being. Always, I would fully open and allow the darkness with no resistance. What I started discovering is that the more I opened to the darkness, the more it deepened my connection to my space of being.
It’s hardest when you’re in the teeth of the storm because you never know when it’s going to end and it feels like you can’t endure opening to it for another second.
The day after my surrender more fear was surging up from the depths of my being than I thought possible. My surrender had initiated a dam to break open and all the darkness that I was desperately trying to suppress came flooding up in seismic waves of terror and fear.
I put my newfound superpowers of openness and total allowing to the test and ventured out into the neighborhood for a walk (something I hadn’t tried in weeks). Like always, my body and mind didn’t make it to the end of the street before urgently telling me to turn around and go home immediately.
I didn’t resist my mind and body’s negativity and fear, instead I pressed on, walking directly into my fear. My mind and body were screaming at me for the next several blocks to turn around and go home. I was feeling weak and ice cold. The dark force that was upon me that had governed my movement for the previous 5 months was adamant that I return home and stay cowered in my room.
I kept walking. And walking and walking and walking. I walked further that day than I had since returning home 3.5 months ago. I remember finally, after who knows how many blocks, the fear temporarily breaking. I remember feeling a sense of ahhhhh and saying to myself, ‘okay, this is the way.’
I knew it even deeper in my being; open, allow, walk into your fear, no resistance. If you want to live in alignment with the kundalini, this is the movement.
I will never forget returning to work two days later on the 6th of February. My shift was only 2.5 hours long, however it felt like 2.5 eons! Terror and fear were flooding my being and coursing through my body.
My hands were shaking, my mind was terrorizing me with non-stop intrusive, dark thoughts and once again my body was a sheet of ice. I literally could not sit still and could barely speak. I paced frantically throughout the retail store, praying that no customers would walk in (only a grumpy old man came in briefly and left). I would look at the clock every 2 minutes, telling myself I could make it till the end of my shift.
I was opening as much as I possibly could, but I felt no match to the forces of fear and terror within me. As it was happening, I could barely believe it was real. Where was all of this fear and terror coming from??... I asked in desperation.
After I left work crying that day, I realized that I had an appetite. Something I hadn’t felt in several months. It was the first sign that my body was healing.
The fear I was feeling was now being released instead of recycled back into my body.
I returned back into work again three days later, still deep in the movement of releasing fear, but feeling much lighter and much more resilient.
By far, the most challenging part of opening to all of the fear within was the constant barrage of dark and horrifying intrusive thoughts. They felt so real. On countless occasions I would be sitting in the back at work opening to an overwhelming purge of fear energy. I would literally be engulfed in terror, and my manger Cody (God Bless that man) would come back and say, “there are customers here and you’re up.”
I would take a deep breath and walk to greet my customers. The terrifying fear energy I was feeling within, and the dark and horrifying intrusive thoughts that the mind was thinking while I was approaching my customers was staggering.
Every sale I made, every day I showed up for work during that period was God’s Will. Now I see and know that ALL is God’s Will.
During my first few months after my surrender, darkness and fear were my ever-present teachers.
As I was walking into the locker room one day at the gym I frequented, I felt something following me, hovering over me. It felt spooky and eerie.
Every time I looked over my shoulder it would stay directly behind me. When I would turn it felt like a wave motion behind me. I shuddered, ‘what is this?’ I just kept opening, kept allowing and didn’t believe all of my terrifying thoughts about what was haunting me.
The darkness was teaching me what an auric field and energetic subtle body was. Mine was so dark and heavy that it felt as if a creepy presence was looming over me.
Whether I was crawling to the bathtub in the mornings to shower because the kundalini energy was thoroughly thrashing me, or not even being able to meditate because of such intense dark and intrusive thoughts, the journey of opening to my darkness has been worth it innumerable times over.
The movement of openness and surrender is still alive and well in me to this day. At this point in the journey, walking towards my fears is no longer a choice. Avoiding my fears has actually become much more painful than walking into them.
“At first, you start chasing the Divine, and then, the Divine starts chasing you.” -Adyashanti
Walking towards my fear is now a way of life, a way of being. If we want to be free, we must allow everything. Our inner movement must become one of ‘total allowing.’
Two years ago, on this day, I made a vow: 2 years. I’d give myself two years of surrendering and opening to my inner darkness before doing something dramatic and permanent. During extremely challenging moments early in the process I had to revisit my vow and commit to patience.
But as things started to get so much better, as my being became lighter and my thoughts not nearly as dark, I forgot all about my vow. I no longer needed to rely on it.
Today is a very special day to me. Two years ago, as I was overwhelmed with negativity and paralyzed with terror, I wondered what my inner state would be like after two full years of surrender and openness.
Well it’s two years later and I’m calm, happy, grateful, appreciative, serene and loving some days, clear minded and most of all I Love being ALIVE.
There’s a childlike innocence and joy within that I’ve reconnected to. The kundalini flows much less inhibited (of course She still teaches me lessons and sometimes really painfully). And of course, I still have a long way to go and a lot of learning about how to constructively live with the evolutionary rocket fuel known as kundalini energy, but even during intense purges and clearings, even when I’m laying in bed frustrated while the kundalini burns away my ego, I’m grateful to be ALIVE.
The darkness is your power. When you open to your darkness in a full and complete way, nothing ‘out there’ can fuck with you anymore. You are free to be exactly who you want to be, and who you really want to be is who you are. The darkness shows you who you are, if only you will open to it.
And who we are is the dark and the light. Love your darkness and it will show you your light in all of its radiance and luminosity.
When we open to and embrace our darkness, we allow it to strip away our falseness and inauthenticity and to know our power so that we can act from a place of truth and authenticity. Darkness transforms.
