Of Cobras And Kundalini
After years of physical problems from Kundalini, during the last couple months I've felt things starting to break loose again. Twice it's felt like my entire system was ready to blow wide open, but each time it passed, leaving me feeling both disappointed and relieved! I began to get that feeling again last night. I awoke this morning after only 3 hrs sleep, feeling semi-nauseous with energy and heat pulsing all over and my spine vibrating. I lay in bed for 2 hours until finally sleep briefly returned, whereupon I found myself lying in bed in a small, seedy hotel room in lndia. I was again in a k-induced and weakened state. I got out of bed to get a bowl of cream of wheat (my favorite comfort food for Kundalini stomach problems), but I couldn't hold it and dropped it on the floor. Some men were at the door -- for some strange reason, they were trying to deliver an ebony grand piano to my room --one that in fact looked strangely like my own. (I was once an avid classical pianist until tendonitis forced me to give it up years ago, causing me to take up yoga.)Soon after I turned them away I was in the street outside the hotel, where I suddenly saw my old sufi friend Shahabudin who had first guided me to India long ago. I haven't been able to bring myself to contact him since his pranayama exercises started my headaches 7 yrs ago. As soon as our eyes met, I went to him and fell into his arms in a long, silent embrace.
Then I left him and from the street saw a small grocery store which I decided to go into to buy more cream of wheat. But when I entered the store there was only a swami sitting in the rear of what was not a store after all, with several puja displays around him. He acknowledged me but didn't invite me to approach him, which I don't think I wanted to do anyway. I clasped my hands together and bowed from a distance, which he again acknowledged, and I turned to leave. But when I walked back outside I realized that what I thought had been an empty yard was now filled with hundreds of cobras.
I stood there, looking for a clear passageway back to the street, but they were everywhere with hardly any space between them. I felt a surge of panic. I couldn't go back in to the swami. What was I to do? Then I awakened, after much less than my usual 6 hrs sleep, but after a little stretching I was wide awake and ready for my cream of wheat. And the sports page. Almost as soon as I awakened from this dream I realized that it was a surprisingly clear synopsis of my path. The cobras that I encountered at the end represented kundalini, the serpent power. The cream of wheat appears to represent material sustenance that was being replaced by spiritual sustenance. The piano and the beings that presented themselves earlier in the dream had all in their own way led me to kundalini but were of no help to me anymore in dealing with this perilous experience. They also all represented loss in various forms which has marked my kundalini journey and to which I was being reconciled in my dream.
© Copyright Jerry Weinstein 2006