Consolidate your energy, your life force. Save it and use it wisely for that which really matters. For have you ever thought about your own energy? How much you have and how much you need? How much gets used by others? Is it being used by others, perhaps against your will? When you feel drained and tired, look at where your energy has gone and decide if it was really worth it. Have you been giving too much away?
Consolidate your energy by pulling it back to yourself, cutting ties that are no longer necessary. And once that is done decide how you wish to use it. Like money in your pocket it has value and power. Save it. Choose wisely how you spend it and it will power you for as long as you need it. And then, unlike money, you can actually take it with you! Now that’s something worth saving!
In the chakra system there is a division between the first three lower chakras and the four higher chakras located above the level of the solar plexus. The lower three chakras are associated with the human animal, which is controlled by the powerful instincts of human nature: survival, food, sex and power. The first half of life is generally dominated by the needs, demands, and passions associated with these lower chakras as we attempt to plant ourselves, find our way to survival, security, pleasure, and power in relation to ourselves, others, and the outer world at large.
In the golden stage of life… – Photo by Jan Ketchel
By midlife, time, the ultimate devourer of all life, awakens us to the fact that we are at least halfway through our life’s journey on earth. We become increasingly confronted with the transitoriness of all material things, as well as with human relations, as those we have loved begin to end their sojourns in this world.
Our questions about the meaning of life and of life beyond physical life become paramount. This is the stage in India where the old yogi would leave the home and life with family to begin the spiritual journey, unattached to former material life and human relations.
In chakra terms, the kundalini energy that once innervated the lower chakras becomes more subtle as it awakens the heart chakra, the birthplace of the spiritual Self. The lower chakras were all about the birth, refinement, and fulfillment of the ego self, but with midlife the values and attachments that once satisfied life lose their compulsive hold as the search for greater meaning is initiated.
The four upper chakras depict an increasingly subtle energy progression, which ultimately results in the separation of soul, or energy body, through the crown chakra at the time of death. Thus, the second half of life is often initiated by a great depression, where one is confronted with the meaninglessness and transitoriness of all that one previously clung to and was passionately motivated by, and instead must go inward to find and cultivate the often hidden ethereal self with a whole new set of rules and intentions.
Of course, many seek rebirths and the fountain of youth in a younger mate or new career at midlife, but often life energy and the lower chakras refuse to fund these quests. So what happens to relationship at midlife if we choose to stay in it versus retreat into the monastery?
For relationship to remain vibrant and meaningful in midlife, we must first surrender our attachment to the roles and expectations that may have neatly served the first half of life. Time to stop mothering and fathering each other. Time to become peers with children and family. All become seekers, equally responsible for their own spiritual journeys, which no one can take for oneself, except oneself: only I can leave my physical body in my energy body when I die; that is a solo journey.
Food and sex continue to have relevance after midlife, but all must conform to energetic limitation. The Shamans of Ancient Mexico were careful to guide that energy was the only criteria for spiritual and sexual life. If one is modest in the expenditure of energy and maintains a sufficient reserve, one could pursue sex and spirit to the end of earthly life.
The key to enjoying fulfilling sex after midlife is dropping the performance expectations of the first half of life. This begins with a deepening spiritual connection that is no longer controlled by the powers of nature and ego that once ruled the lower chakras. The focus of union at the level of the upper chakras is energetic union at a deeply subtle level, which invites the body and lower chakras into complete spiritual/physical union. This is total union in human form, the merger of subtle and physical energy into pure energetic oneness. This is conscious spiritual/physical union.
Kindling the spiritual… – Photo by Jan Ketchel
Ironically, this kind of union may not ever require actual physical union with another, as union at subtle energy levels can happen and be experienced physically in a dream. Many dreamers have reported that their deepest sexual/spiritual experiences have occurred in dreams, as energy is freed to join at the most subtle level.
The sole criterion for true love in the afternoon of life is a shared quest for spiritual evolution between partners. And spiritual evolution requires that we detach from all the rules, roles, obligations, and demands of the lower chakra system that consumes the first half of life. And with that, we find ourselves free to love with abandon, an experience that transcends the ego’s ideal of love in the first half of life.
Love never ends, but physical life does. To refine love and take it forward, unattached, is a worthy journey for the second half of life, as it prepares us for our definitive journey in infinity. The maturing of love in the afternoon is one way to take the journey on the one-way journey we’re all taking together.
Kundalini is the Hindu name for the primal energy that fuels creation. In the human being, the microcosm of the macrocosm of all creation, kundalini is said to lie dormant, a coiled snake at the base of the human spine awaiting activation at times of growth.
Kundalini awakens, becomes aroused, and begins its upward climb through various chakras, energy centers located along the spinal column, until it ultimately merges with its male counterpart, Shiva, at the crown of the head. Yes, kundalini, in the form of the feminine Shakti, is the divine energy that fuels and causes to unfold the Self, that which we truly are.
Kundalini energy is not specific to Hindus and Yoga traditions. Mystics of all faiths, who have experienced transcendent encounters in visions and meetings with God, have been struck by the illumined energy of kundalini. In psychology, kundalini would be the equivalent of psychic energy, what Freud first identified as libido, as it innervated the sexual center or chakra in its awakening of the physical body to its primal sexual energy.
The Taoist would know kundalini through what is termed chi, an experience of which every seasoned martial artist can attest. In the realm of everyday life, somatic ailments in the form of anxiety or headaches, for example, aside from their physiological roots, may indeed be the consequences of an awakening kundalini, pushing for developmental unfolding with great urgency.
Even drug addiction can be understood in kundalini’s energetic terms. Methamphetamine activates a compulsion to experience the expansive union of Shakti and Shiva in godly omnipotence. The heroin addict experiences the equally blissful state of oneness of union with Shiva in a blissfully dormant state, like a fetus enveloped in the womb, in the sweet harmony of sleep prior to kundalini’s violent awakening at the time of labor. Hallucinogens are a crapshoot as they stir kundalini to usurp the ego’s control and take one on an unhinged trip with kundalini within or without the body.
The Hindus have defined our current time on earth as the age of Kali Yuga, which essentially represents a Dark Age with the degeneration of human civilization. Carl Jung in the 1930s agreed with this characterization of our time, which he likened to the time of the fall of the Roman Empire.
The events we now witness around us on the world stage reflect this disintegration, as reverberations in the macrocosm of the destructive side of Shakti unleash kundalini throughout the world to prepare the way for a new era. Whereas an individual may be confronted with powerful kundalini energy when it is time to grow up, kundalini can also take the form of a powerful recapitulation experience that rocks the body and psyche as it insists upon burning through the limitations of old trauma.
On the world stage, Trump is definitely controlled by an activated kundalini energy. This is partly the power of his seductive draw. He embodies the energy of destructive change, and everyone feels the desire to break through the gridlock of the current world order.
I have often spoken of ISIS as also being an unconscious agent of the destructive side of the Goddess Isis, who, like Shakti with her kundalini energy, seeks to level the current world order that threatens her planet Earth. The problem here is that kundalini, lacking the companion of awake human consciousness to safely guide its path of change, will wreak major destruction to the planet. In the nomenclature of the Shamans of Ancient Mexico we are being asked to engage our intent to beckon positive change.
Just as an individual who takes drugs risks death or psychosis with an unhinged encounter with kundalini, so our collective human race also risks serious destruction if we further kundalini’s destructive path by electing madness. As I have previously stated, Hitler was not elected, Hitler seized power. Evolution insists now that we consciously choose our leader, who is entrusted to safely guide us and this kundalini energy of change through the chakras of our current world reality.
Just as a student of yoga is taught to safely guide kundalini through the chakras of the body with the appropriate deliberate guidance of a master, or risk destruction through overzealous action, so may we be wise in our choice of a leader to soberly channel kundalini through a newly formed world backbone. If we miss that opportunity, we will indeed be consciously signing up for the world rollercoaster of kundalini’s unhinging!
The Shamans of Ancient Mexico discovered that the real culprit undermining humankind’s survival is the unshakeable quest to be important. In modern terms, this manifests as how many friends we have, who likes our postings, our pictures, tracks our tweets, wants our attention at any moment, day or night.
While the lion’s share of our vital energy is trained to hear the crystal sounding ding on our cellphones, announcing that “I am wanted! I am important!” a predatory dark force rapes the earth of its vital energy and relegates its human inhabitants to being, as don Juan Matus called it, “chickens in a chicken coop.”
Nothing but a little island grounded in the vast everything… – Photo by Jan Ketchel
For years, I strove to be somebody by cracking the nut of the truth of our existence and sharing it with other seekers. I discovered early on that this naive romance with stardom was barred to me. Advertising generated nothing. Mainstream book publishers had no interest. I had traveled so far from the mainstream that the mainstream had no interest in my “good news.” Perhaps what I was really being taught was the foolhardiness of my own self-importance.
Side by side with self-importance is yet another energetic path that has ruthlessly hemmed humankind in, the path of inaction. Carl Jung noted that the yin and yang of our world are expressed in two different energetic systems: animal and plant.
Animal energy is the energy of action, it is masculine energy. It derives its sustenance from outside of itself, in the world at large. This is extroverted energy. A dominance of animal energy in humankind has led to power, control, and dominance games—that which rules the world at present. This dominance of extroverted Western values has also infected the greatest spiritual strongholds of the East, India and China.
Self-importance, on a global scale, is typified in the likes of Donald Trump who unapologetically mirrors the flippant, egoistic male action reaching, in comic crescendo, for world dominance.
Contrasting animal action is the rooted plant. The plant world, the feminine yin of our planet, is self-contained, deriving its energy receptively from the rays of the sun. Like any pregnancy, it produces from within, needing not to travel about and dominate for its substances and metabolic processes but requiring only nurturing stillness.
In human terms, plant spirituality is the Buddha beneath the bodhi tree, Christ upon the wooden cross tree. Both exemplify rootedness, stillness, the patience of the immobilized tree. In this deep groundedness, in this stillness, comes detachment from the grasp of illusion, detachment from extroverted action, detachment from the actions of needing to be somebody.
By withdrawing energy from attachment to the action of self-importance—the energy of definition and meaning through hierarchy and dominance—we are freed to see beyond the veils of self-importance, retaining our energy to truly evolve, not as being somebody but simply being and becoming what we truly are.
The energetic antidote to the one-sided dominance of human animal energy is human plant energy, the energy of yin, now uprooted from Tibet and planted throughout the world, particularly in America. Even the most prized Western brain science now embraces the technology of mindfulness as the key to neuroplasticity—real change.
Ultimately, the Taoist rebalancing of yin and yang, plant and animal, action and inaction, will evolve us into a new chapter in this Earth dream that we are all sharing. But for now, we must burn through the deluge of self-importance that is exhausting us in our need to be somebody. The ground is prepared to receive our planted energy and the seeds of genuine, needed change.
What stories am I telling myself today? – Photo by Jan Ketchel
Reality awaits us, just beyond the stories that present themselves rapid-fire from the inner “press” of the mind. When the shamans urge us to “suspend judgment,” they are referring to this function of mind that so quickly organizes a story around the scantest detail perceived and fleshed out by the mind. We are then drawn to attach to the story generated by the mind; in other words: to live as if the story were reality.
The “judgment” here is the storyline we have bought into and energetically invested in as emotions and thoughts emerge to guide our actions in accordance with our judgment or interpretation of reality.
So much of our vital energy is bound up in our interpretations of reality that we find ourselves encased in the familiar yet largely false stories we tell ourselves over and over again. Our intent gets bound up in upholding those stories too; or simply put, our intent generates our self-fulfilling story prophecy in our experiences of everyday reality.
For instance, one story might be that I don’t feel valuable or lovable. This story becomes reflected in the eyes of everyone I meet, their actions mirroring the story I tell myself. My intent generates the reality of my story. This story then becomes the filter for my life. All approaching energy, or the unfolding of daily life, becomes automatically formatted and neatly tailored to fit into and validate the truth of my story. This then becomes my reality.
Our stories become knitted together with such regularity or habit that we come to rest our identity upon them, the familiar tales we tell ourselves. They become like family. Thus, regardless of how limiting or unfulfilling our stories leave us, we remain compulsively drawn and attached to them for a sense of known definition in this world.
Tread lightly as you decide to release yourself from the bondage of your core stories. Change, regardless of how beneficial, often feels deeply disturbing to the security of known stories, as they are challenged to reveal their true identity and their true validity in our lives.
Time to spend our energy on what really matters… – Photo by Chuck Ketchel
On the other hand, every time we stop the flow of energy from attaching to a story that flirts for our attention we accrue that energy in our spiritual savings account. When enough energy has been saved we are indeed freed to discover the true nature of who we really are as we spend our energy exploring true reality, the reality always present and coexistent but generally filtered out by our all-encompassing stories.
Suspend judgment. Explore the true nature of reality as it presents and unfolds in oncoming time. What an amazing true story awaits!
