Kundalini, the Breath of Life

Classically, in the scriptures of the Vedas, of Kashmir Shaivism, and of Vajrayana Buddhism, the fundamental issue that each of us faces is to confront our own desires and in that confrontation, to understand the nature of our mind. We then appreciate that our mind is a manifestation of our consciousness, and that, in fact, it is not OUR consciousness at all, but consciousness itself.

A simple way to relate to this is for you just to look around the room you’re in. You may notice objects and have thoughts and maybe even feelings about them. There is, however, one thing that you are seeing that 99.99% of people never notice–your own awareness. Everything that is in that room is manifest on the screen of your awareness.
This awareness is one, and it has the capacity for extension and absorption–it has vibrancy. It takes on a fundamental presence, and within that presence there is all potential: past, present and future. All knowledge, anything imaginable, and even that which is unimaginable is present within that vibrancy. That presence, which is one and self-aware, is sometimes referred to as Shiva. More often, however, that vibrancy is identified with the feminine and is called a goddess.

This goddess is the breath of life. Another classical scriptural name for the breath of life is kundalini. That breath of life is present in each of us equally without ever differentiating itself, in the same way that a symphony is an expression of a huge number of notes that only together make a suggestion of the richness and the abundance that is available within the music itself.

Photo by Kristen Francis

This breath of life, the vibrancy of ultimate consciousness, is the subject of our meditation. When we sit, we’re tuning into the energy that supports our physiology and our physiognomy–our bodies and our minds. In becoming aware of the circulation of energy that sustains our bodies and our minds, we will become aware of a deeper energetic movement happening within this mechanism, which is also kundalini. There is the energy that supports our body, the energy that supports our nervous system, and the energy that is awareness itself–all of which is one and all of which is ever-present within us.

There is no duality, there is no dichotomy, and it is so profoundly simple that there is nothing to be confused about.