{"id":4618,"date":"2023-12-20T09:33:06","date_gmt":"2023-12-20T09:33:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.arogyayogaschool.com\/blog\/?p=4618"},"modified":"2024-09-29T11:55:01","modified_gmt":"2024-09-29T11:55:01","slug":"what-is-kundalini","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.arogyayogaschool.com\/blog\/what-is-kundalini\/","title":{"rendered":"What is Kundalini Yoga"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"wp-block-rank-math-toc-block\" id=\"rank-math-toc\"><h2>Table of Contents<\/h2><nav><div><div><a href=\"#shiva-and-shakti\">Shiva and Shakti<\/a><div><div><a href=\"#kundalini-yoga-energy\">Kundalini yoga energy<\/a><\/div><div><a href=\"#spiritual-path-of-kundalini-yoga\">Spiritual path of Kundalini Yoga<\/a><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/nav><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Kundalini <\/strong>is synonymous with Shakti, which literally means \u201cpower.\u201d In this case,&nbsp;we are talking about the innate divinity of the universe, which our sources call&nbsp;Shiva.&nbsp; His&nbsp;shakti&nbsp;is&nbsp;personified&nbsp;as&nbsp;a&nbsp;goddess.&nbsp;While&nbsp;Shiva&nbsp;is&nbsp;the&nbsp;supreme&nbsp;god,&nbsp;the&nbsp;source and transcendent witness of the phenomenal world, Shakti is that world it-&nbsp;self. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"shiva-and-shakti\">Shiva and Shakti<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>She is the ceaseless play of divine energy, the ongoing dance of phenomena.&nbsp;Together, Shiva and Shakti are the divine male and female modes of existence. But,&nbsp;in truth, they are not separate from each other, but an integral unity. This unity is&nbsp;also&nbsp;called&nbsp;nonduality.&nbsp;&nbsp;<br>This is not just metaphysical speculation or mythology. It&#8217;s a description of your&nbsp;own experience, and is meant for you to understand at an experiential level. So the&nbsp;idea of Shiva and Shakti is not supposed to describe some remote state of affairs,&nbsp;but a very personal and intimate thing. It is an immanent reality, right now, the very&nbsp;dynamic of your own consciousness.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Subjectively, consciousness is experienced as two polarities. There is the con-\u00a0sciousness itself, which has no particular color, shape, or attributes of its own, but\u00a0simply reflects whatever it experiences. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It is the eternal still point of awareness,\u00a0changeless and untouched. At the same time, this consciousness manifests as the\u00a0endless plurality, color, and fanfare of experience. This experience is both your own\u00a0inner world and the world of your senses. That creative, energetic play of expe-\u00a0rience\u00a0is\u00a0Shakti,\u00a0and\u00a0your\u00a0own\u00a0still\u00a0point\u00a0of\u00a0awareness\u00a0is\u00a0Shiva.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Nor are these poles separate things with an independent existence. The creative\u00a0manifestation of experience is always happening within the changeless sphere of\u00a0pure consciousness. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>That consciousness is the space within which our lives un-\u00a0fold.\u00a0\u00a0<strong>Shiva <\/strong>is the ultimate Self and the ground of all being. Ultimately, we are identical\u00a0with this Self. But he also takes individual, limited forms to explore the potential of his own being.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The capital-S Self is not the same as the lowercase self of individual egohood. \u201cEgo\u201d is called ahankara in Sanskrit. It is that part of the self which thinks \u201cme\u201d and \u201cmine,\u201d which tries to appropriate and possess experience, to freeze it into something solid and manageable, and which constructs elaborate sto- ries and self-images. These thoughts are just that, thoughts\u2014completely fictitious, with no more substance than a puff of smoke. And yet they persist and have a powerful grip on us. Most of us live and die under ego&#8217;s spell. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We never get so much as a glimpse of what lies beyond the fictions that we spin about \u201cI,\u201d \u201cme,\u201d and \u201cmine.\u201d The fabric of self-deception is woven from the filament of such thoughts. What possibilities would await us if we tore away that veil, if we unraveled this bewitchment?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Make no mistake, getting to that point is slow, painstaking work. It takes guts and a steely determination to work with your mind and experience, come what may. But somewhere along the way a breakthrough can occur. Your body and mind can sud- denly be zapped by the energy of awakening, as if brought to life for the first time. It&#8217;s not just an idea. It&#8217;s a real possibility. That makes it both attractive and risky.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"kundalini-yoga-energy\">Kundalini yoga energy <\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>This can come about by conscious effort or by accident. In fact, the energy that we work with in <strong>Kundalini yoga <\/strong>is the very same energy that goes into the construction of ego. How could that be the case? When this energy is invested in protecting your personal identity and serving your own limited and selfish agenda, it mani- fests as ego. When it is awakened and aimed at spiritual liberation, it is known as Kundalini and quickly rises to meet its goal. So while awakening and egohood are<br>opposite modes of being, the underlying reality that brings them to life is the same.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"spiritual-path-of-kundalini-yoga\">Spiritual path of Kundalini Yoga<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>The spiritual path is not a matter of fixing yourself or \u201cdestroying\u201d your ego as if you were something broken that needed to be replaced. The message of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.arogyayogaschool.com\/kundalini-yoga-teacher-training-rishikesh.php\"><strong>Kundalini <\/strong><\/a>is that your own present awareness, pristine and eternal, is already divine. Even egohood and negativity are just dynamic expressions of your inherent divinity. So the spiritual path is not about a process of making yourself better. It&#8217;s about a process of preparing yourself for the recognition of the reality that already exists in<br>the here and now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Kundalini is synonymous with Shakti, which literally means \u201cpower.\u201d In this case,&nbsp;we are talking about the innate divinity<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4976,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":[],"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","footnotes":""},"categories":[75,131,118],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4618","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-health-fitness","category-meditation-is-a-practice-where-an-individual-uses-a-technique","category-spirituality-has-developed-and-expanded-over-time-"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.arogyayogaschool.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4618","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.arogyayogaschool.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.arogyayogaschool.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.arogyayogaschool.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.arogyayogaschool.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4618"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.arogyayogaschool.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4618\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.arogyayogaschool.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4976"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.arogyayogaschool.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4618"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.arogyayogaschool.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4618"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.arogyayogaschool.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4618"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<!-- This website is optimized by Airlift. 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