Life must be consumed whole, with all its pain, joy, and sorrow.
—Swami Rudrananda

Students sometimes ask if our practice involves spiritual bypassing. They are unclear about how the energetic processing of experience fits in with what might be called the “human” aspect of their lives. My response is that, through our sadhana, we learn that nothing is to be rejected, and that emotions are both a level of consciousness within us and energies that we can learn to process.

The intention and eventual fruit of Kuṇḍalinī Sādhana is the liberation of kuṇḍalinī — the freeing of our individuated awareness from its perceived separation from its source, Consciousness. We seek to know ourselves as that eternal pure Consciousness. This is inherently possible because there is no distinction between us and God, except in our experience, in the propensity for viewing life from a limited understanding and not seeing a higher one.

My teacher Rudi explained that most people fail...

Discipline is our devotion in action, and if we truly love God and want to be happy, then work and discipline are a joy. The living of that realization is unconditional love, devotion, gratitude, and the stillness of surrender, masterfully interlaced with an in-depth inner practice, selfless service, conscious choice, and disciplined action — all revealing the effulgence of the Heart we wish to live from every day of our life.

Nondual wisdom teachings always begin by articulating what is called the darśana, or “view” of the tradition. The key to nondual Tantric practices is exactly what the description implies: nonduality. This means there is no distinction between Spirit and that which It manifests. Conversely, there is no loss of that Spirit as manifestation disappears. In the picture, above, you cannot tell whether the woman is manifesting into form or dissolving into non-form. It’s a graphic way of expressing that everything in creation arises and...

Kuṇḍalinī is the river of liquid light that flows in you and flows in me. . . the energy in all things. —Swami Khecarantha

Kuṇḍalinī is the individuated expression of the Divine. It is like a river of liquid light that flows in you, me, and in all things. The gift of our human incarnation is that we possess the capacity and consciousness to know ourselves as divine. Through our practice of kuṇḍalinī sādhana, we awaken an awareness of our divinity that typically lies dormant.

People often observe that when kuṇḍalinī is aroused, it amplifies our inner dynamics — including the impurities of consciousness and emotions like jealousy, greed, and anger.

Nondual Tantra teaches that all experience arises from a singular source and that they all are dimensions of Consciousness, expressed by kuṇḍalinī śakti. Śakti is the energy behind the scenes that feeds and sustains every aspect of human experience — even those dominated by ego, emotions, and thought-constructs.

The...

Rudi was a tsunami of śakti that swept its way through our lives and consciousness, washing away ego and misunderstanding. Like a tsunami, he left as quickly as he came, leaving behind the gift of unfolding freedom. — Swami Khecaranatha

The only true gift of a guru is that of unfolding freedom in his or her students. The singular purpose of our relationship with a teacher is to give us the support we need to establish our own direct connection with God. That support creates a conduit to śakti, the power of the grace that is freeing us.

The possibility of the unfolding of freedom is always activated by God, but for most people a relationship with a teacher is required to power it. Once the longing to know God propels us to find a teacher, we discover in that connection the energy necessary to fuel our journey. The teacher is an energy source that we can tune in to because we may not have the mechanism, the sensitivity, or even the awareness to dial into that resonance on our...

Śakti transmission is Consciousness looking back at Itself. Svātantrya Śakti is the autonomous power of Consciousness to forever manifest Its own fullness and perfection, expressing Itself as a matrix of energy called Kauliki Śakti.

Kauliki Śakti is Consciousness becoming the universe, individuating into kuṇḍalinī and into you and me. Because kuṇḍalinī śakti is everywhere, śakti transmission is not the movement of energy from one location to another. Instead, it is a contact between two points held within the dynamic infinite field of Oneness. That is where transmission takes place.

What is this energetic field of Consciousness? Max Planck, a German theoretical physicist, whose discovery of energy quanta won him the Nobel Prize in 1918, said this:

As a man who has devoted his whole life to the most clear headed science, to the study of matter, I can tell you as a result of my research about atoms this much: There is no matter as such. All matter originates and exists only...

It is not by escaping our humanity or trying to disappear into the transcendent, but in finding that place where they come into union, the mystery that is inherently inside all of us is revealed.

Throughout the ages, people have asked these fundamental questions: “Why am I here? What is the relationship between me and the Divine?” It is our sādhana that brings us to the understanding that we were birthed out of the intimacy between Śiva and Śakti, Consciousness and energy. It is that dynamic interchange, that intimacy of love that creates and gives life.

When the eternal and the human meet, love is born; that is love doubling back on itself. By finding that place of union within us, we recognize that we, too, are birthed out of love.

Realization is living that union in our own lives, with heart wide open. It is the revelation of the mystery that is inherently inside all of us. How amazing that this could be true!

If we accept the premise that we were birthed out of the...

Kuṇḍalinī is the volcanic flow of śakti that burns away all obscurity as She erupts into the central channel and our awareness. 

I often say that devotion is the full measure of surrender and in the practice of Kuṇḍalinī Sādhana, we discover that this means allowing the powerful force of śakti within us to do its work.

We can describe that energy in many ways, but in the context of Kuṇḍalinī Sādhana we are talking about Śiva’s Śakti — about the energy through which Pure Consciousness expresses and manifests Its primal urge, which is the expansion of fullness, freedom, and joy. All form arises and subsides on the field Consciousness, and this happens without Śiva losing any sense of Oneness. Manifestation comes into existence through Kuṇḍalinī Śakti, and in the nondual Trika tradition She is known as the Goddess Parā. Her primary attributes are that She is the power of will, knowledge, and action, the energies that Śiva uses to express His innate joy into form, into...

The cathedral of doubt is made of sand. In stillness thoughts go no further and distinctions vanish, then doubt dissolves back into the ocean of consciousness.

My experience as a teacher is that doubt is a major reason why students lose sight of the ultimate intention of sādhana: to find that God dwells within them as their Self. In the classical nondual Tantrāloka there’s an extraordinary statement that says that doubt is the fundamental effect of misunderstanding, and that any attempt to discover the truth from a place of doubt is impossible. So let’s look at doubt: what it is, and why it gets in the way of spiritual practice.

One major form doubt takes is that we doubt God’s existence because we can’t see him — even though, in truth, we see him every moment of our lives. It’s so important for us to penetrate through that misunderstanding, to grasp that everything we see is God, and that it is only our dualistic perception that prevents us from...

If Consciousness and energy are present everywhere, how do we connect to them? Are they located somewhere we can feel them?

Consciousness, in its broadest sense, has no locality, because it is present everywhere, and yet we can experience it in a location. We can touch it in our heart, in our mind, and even in our toes and in the world around us.

Energy is the power of Consciousness. The two are never separate, but it is through energy (śakti) that divine Consciousness manifests everything in creation. Pure Consciousness, through Its own autonomous power of śakti, expresses all of life — including our own — on the field of Its own Oneness. And yet, except for the rare person, the capacity to recognize that omnipresent field of Consciousness is not apparent. Although I do give practices that guide students to directly becoming aware of awareness, the secret of Tantric practices is that śakti is the pathway back to its source, which is Consciousness.

How can you see the...