Turning Tension Into Flow

One of the remarkable things about humans is the superficiality we are willing to accept in ourselves, and the superficiality we bring to our search for depth. We must work to develop the psychic mechanism in us that can hold the structure of higher consciousness.

A student came to me recently and said, “I’m really a mess and haven’t meditated in a long time.” This is a story I hear repeatedly, and perhaps you’ve had a similar experience. We can get so absorbed by drama, tension, and the pressures of our life that we are pulled out of ourselves. We push, demand, and are consumed by struggling with our own experience.

All struggle is ego. To say this is not to deny that we face challenges. But we allow our engagement with these difficulties to make us forget that they are only a reflection of our own state, of our misunderstanding. The fundamental discipline is to not allow ourselves to be caught in struggle, and we do that by simply taking a breath and turning our awareness and energy back inside. If we are overwhelmed, we can repeat that, breath after breath, until we have found a deeper place within that is not affected by conditions.

This disciplined inner practice is the only way we can avoid being pulled out of our center, and it’s much more than wishing we didn’t get mauled by our mind and emotions. We back up our intention by developing the spiritual muscle power to consciously take the energy of the contraction we feel and internalize it. We consume the energy — pull it back into the psychic body so that it becomes the fuel for opening more deeply.

Rudi’s Double-Breath Exercise

Rudi gave us a robust tool for consuming energy in this way. His basic double-breath exercise gives us the capacity to internalize when we are about to (or have already begun to) externalize. When we pull the energy of contraction back inside, it adds to what Rudi called flow, the energy we can feel moving through the central channel, the suṣumṇa. It is this flow that clears out all the blocks in that psychic system, creating a pathway for kuṇḍalinī to rise and gradually expand our consciousness. The double-breath may seem simple, but it has tremendous power.

Doing this inner work will not make life’s difficulties disappear, but it can free us from being bound and caught by conditions. And then everything we face becomes fuel for our growth instead of a limitation. But no matter how long we practice, internalizing our energy is a conscious process, a conscious choice, that must be repeated whenever needed. This choice is the essence of sādhana. Don’t wait until you’re pulled far outside of yourself; use the double-breath exercise to become established in openness and flow. Then, before the next contraction starts to take place, you will have already developed an inner mechanism to pull that energy back inside and direct it into the central channel.

The sooner we develop that capacity and truly establish ourselves in flow, the sooner we can discover the deeper dimensions of the central channel. Ultimately, we develop such subtlety of awareness that we can access the finest channel, which is the pure light of Consciousness. It’s not just that we’re turning inside; we are using the energy and awareness of that internalization to find a deeper and deeper flow of kuṇḍalinī śakti, and then the source of that śakti.

Kuṇḍalinī Is the Power of Consciousness

All experiences happen within the central channel, because all the levels and dimensions of kuṇḍalinī are embedded in our psychic system. That channel is the home of the energies of your mental, emotional, and physical bodies, which are never separate from Consciousness, the source of all energy. Whatever experience you’re having can be internalized and transformed into energy that has no content, and whether we’re struggling with an externalized event or a mental/emotional disturbance is irrelevant. The double-breath exercise frees energy from its content, and then it can flow not only in the suṣumṇa, but into deeper dimensions of the central channel, into deeper levels of itself — until the innate intelligence within energy finds its own source in Consciousness. 

From the first moment of conception in the womb, the conscious energy of kuṇḍalinī descends into us as a streak of light, and every physical and mental aspect of the body forms around that. That light is Consciousness, and our sādhana is to know ourselves as That. But when we perpetuate the darkness, we’re not even looking for the light. We must have the simple discipline to take a breath and meditate every day. All struggle reflects our inability to have the discipline to look for a different experience.

My teacher Rudi said, “Life must be consumed whole, with all its pain, joy, and sorrow.” This means that we must choose to internalize the energy of our life, instead of being caught in struggle. There is never a moment when that choice is not available. It is up to us whether we continue in darkness or to seek the light.