The Virgo/Pisces polarity pair defines the context for the current discussions about our relationship with Kundalini Yoga and its role in the Aquarian Age.
March 9 – Virgo Full Moon
10:48 AM PDT (17:48 GMT) at 19 degrees Virgo and Pisces.
The Pisces archetype shows us where we want to go – unity consciousness and divine love. The Virgo archetype helps us get there and stay there. Virgo is about practicing the techniques and doing the work with the support of the love of Mother Earth. Virgo is about the descent into the physical body. We can contain and the higher frequencies in our bodies only as we progressively clear the fear imprints from our chakras and ten bodes.
The Virgo/Pisces polarity pair is about our dynamic inter-dimensional relationship with physical and non-physical realities. Virgo is serious, but not aggressive. Pisces is elusive if not anchored in physical reality. The pair is about learning to live in physical reality where many realities exist simultaneously.
March 9 – Mercury Goes Direct
At 8:49 PM PDT (3:49 GMT) at 28 degrees Aquarius
The lull is over. All planets are direct until Pluto goes retrograde April 25. Our mind may still be a bit fuzzy, but none the less creative and inspired, while Mercury is in Pisces March 17-April 27. Venus in Taurus March 6-April 3 can keep us grounded.
At a Crossroads
As I explain in my book 2020 Makeover, we are personally and globally at a crossroads. Our spiritual path and Kundalini Yoga are also at at crossroads. Where do we want to go? How do we want to direct our lives? We have serious choices to make. The bottom line is that we have to figure out how to be OK with ourselves.
For me personally, it has taken so much work and many decades of practice to have even a glimpse of where I want to be. I don’t want to lose it. I choose to maintain and strengthen the silence, the divine connection within. When my mind is in judgment, I can’t maintain my connection, and I experience that my inner peace and well-being is compromised.
Anger and Our Human Emotions
People are experiencing different levels of anger, which is a natural human emotion. Anger is the fire that fuels change. Anger motivates us to look deeply at the dangerous beliefs that create self-righteousness and support abuse. We see how people and institutions use shame and fear to dominate others and maintain a destructive and exploitative status quo.
Shaming women (and men) for having emotions and being emotional is a form of intimidation that stops women from being honest, even with themselves, and prevents them from sharing their stories of abuse.
It is not possible (and certainly not a good idea to try) to bypass our human emotions, i.e. shut down our lower chakras and ‘blissfully’ float out of our body in the upper chakras. Our emotions speak to us and help us identify our hidden shadows. Repression increases anger and causes disease. We need anger and all our emotions to fully participate in life. Our emotions make it possible to be both human and honest.
Different Stages, Needs, and Attitudes
We must understand that for each individual the healing process is very personal. Healing naturally takes longer and is more complex for those who have been abused and indoctrinated. Abuse and traumatic stress can even change how our brain functions.*(1) Those who are less personally affected and invested are able to be more detached and less personally identified with abuse.
It is part of the human condition to be sensitive and defensive when we feel attacked and unsafe. When we don’t say what others want to hear, they may accuse us of supporting the opposite view. In so many ways, we are all entangled in projections, expectations, and opinions. We feel the need to be right, reassured, safe, and reaffirmed.
The deep Pluto process helps us identify these tendencies and notice (1) what we look for, give importance to, and need to feel secure, and (2) how we filter and interpret what we see and hear.
We Need Our Neutral Higher Mind
Numerologically 2020 is a four, which represents the neutral mind. Good choice Universe! We need access to our neutral mind to navigate the times. Neutral reduces our need and tendency to judge, react defensively, and not take other’s views personally. In our neutral mind, we can’t totally eliminate our interpretations, but we can limit them and see them. We find a space to observe what is without automatically reacting.
Our neutral mind helps us get self-clarity too. We can see how we abuse ourselves. We can see our own shadow, darkness, and how we beat ourselves up. We can witness that there is no freedom or peace in judgment. It takes time, persistence, and self-love to move through resistance, grow up and mature, and find a space of peace within. Our neutral mind helps us be patient with ourselves as we learn and experience life.
There are so many factors, opinions, and facts. We can’t like everything. We are not supposed to! Our job is to make our own choices based on our own priorities and values, and allow others the space to do the same.
My Reflections on the Future of Kundalini Yoga
Now I offer my reflections on the future of Kundalini Yoga as it relates to my/our personal practice and role as a teacher of this technology.
What Is Kundalini Yoga and Where Did It Come From?
Kundalini is the term used to designate the force of consciousness within each human being that can be activated to awaken our mind to the reality of oneness or unity (the meaning of yoga.)
Kundalini Yoga refers to yogic technology that helps create this activation and awakening.
Kundalini Yoga is a generic term that has been used by many teachers to teach many practices.
There are other schools that teach their brand of Kundalini Yoga.
In the United States, the words Kundalini Yoga could not be trademarked because these two words designate a spiritual and yogic path and practice, which belong to humanity and are not subject to proprietary ownership. This explains why there is a copyright of the phrase ‘Kundalini Yoga as taught by Yogi Bhajan.’
What Yogi Bhajan taught is a mixture of what he learned from his teachers in India and what he ‘channeled.’ Wherever what he gave us came from, it is invaluable technology that cannot be exclusively defined by or associated with one man or one organization.
Seeing the Shadow Doesn’t Require Liking It
How can we understand what happened and what is happening now? Maybe we can’t fully understand with our rational mind and while we are in a state of shock and dismay. But we can notice that we live in a dualistic world and that the nature of reality is created by the dance of polarities. By its very nature, duality includes both black AND white, good AND evil, and many shades of gray.
The black and the gray are ‘shadow’ expressions of universal energies, which when their expressions are recognized, accepted, and loved can be elevated into more useful and mature expressions. This awakening and dealing with our shadow or unevolved parts of ourselves is an on-going process in our human journey. When the Pluto archetype steps into the picture, as is the case in 2020, we are dramatically confronted with our shadow and the necessity to deal with it.
We need our neutral mind to witness reality beyond duality – the oneness, peaceful, and creative co-existence and interaction of stable and flowing polarities. And we need a spiritual practice and technology like Kundalini Yoga and Meditation to help us access our neutral mind, where we can observe how in unawakened consciousness the shadow of duality plays out in our human lives.
Our first goal is to SEE it. But we don’t have to like it! And there are lots of things we don’t like. Seeing and observing transcend liking or disliking, rejecting or embracing. As we have life experiences and mature, we learn to be selective and discriminate according to our own values what we like and what we don’t. But having preferences doesn’t require denying what exists, or preventing others from having their personal preferences.
The perceived need to discount or deny what we don’t like seems to be a factor that confuses current discussions at this time. People have had very different experiences. Some have been seriously abused. Some have had great experiences with Yogi Bhajan. And lots of people who never even saw Yogi Bhajan have been helped and uplifted with their practice of Kundalini Yoga.
Patriarchal Darkness
Discernment is necessary in regards to Kundalini Yoga. We don’t throw out Kundalini Yoga, but we definitely need to evaluate how we practice Kundalini Yoga and separate the essence of the technology from patriarchal and other beliefs and attitudes that have been encoded in the mindset that currently surrounds this technology and the institutions that lay claim to it.
Yogi Bhajan came from India to the United States with his patriarchal attitude. It is also a historical fact that Yogi Bhajan brought the technology of Kundalini Yoga to the world. This happened at the end of the Piscean Age from 1969-2004, which was the height of the age of darkness – Kali Yuga. His shadow side was also very dark. Yet through his seemingly almost supernatural powers he was able to bring through this technology.
Everything around him was dark. Many of his ‘happy hippy’ students wanted love, but they were often asleep, stoned, and dysfunctional. Sometimes I wonder how Yogi Bhajan kept going and teaching when he knew that we didn’t understand what he is saying. But he persisted to offer us not only the technology, but a powerful energy field that could help us break through the darkness. After White Tantric courses, he often had to be carried off the stage because he couldn’t walk.
The Dark Energy Had and Has to be Cleared
There is more light on the planet now, so it is perhaps hard to understand (or remember) how things were in the last century. Many teachers and students of many paths worked hard and sacrificed a lot to clear some of the darkness. As a result, we are better able to be receptive to the increased frequencies that are infusing the planet today. It is easier for the younger generations to do so.
I personally participated in over 200 days of White Tantric courses with Yogi Bhajan. For decades the weekend classes were 2 ½ days long. There were five Tantric days at Summer and Winter Solstice events. After each course, it took me a week or more to recover. I would experience headaches, flu like symptoms, and be exhausted for days afterwards.
A member of Yogi Bhajan’s staff explained to me that the first half of each day was devoted to clearing personal karma. The second half was devoted to clearing planetary karma. These courses were work, not parties.
Although sadhana and my personal practice helped keep me together, this too was work. For years I practiced up to five hours a day because it didn’t take long for the good energy to dissipate. I often wondered, what is the matter? Now I understand that in the darkness there was no place to go, no hook up to the reality of oneness that could be anchored into my consciousness or my body.
The fact is that Yogi Bhajan brought us Kundalini Yoga in the midst of the darkest part of the Piscean Age. Now the question is “What are we going to do with Kundalini Yoga in the Aquarian Age?”
The Energy Has Shifted
Because the Earth’s energy field has changed, how we practice Kundalini Yoga also must change to align with the higher frequencies. Maybe we had to beat ourselves to submission to break through the darkness in the past. But alignment with the new frequencies requires kindness, subtle sensitivity, and love. The demanding military approach is no longer appropriate because it doesn’t align with the heart-centered frequencies.
All the confusion and upset that we are experiencing now is an indication of a need for a new alignment, a more subtle approach to our practice. We not only need to reset our energy, we have to reset our attitude and our altitude so that we fit into the higher frequencies. Some of what may have been useful in the past is now disruptive and inappropriate. Many are feeling this even if they can’t articulate the message.
A new approach and alignment is not about rejecting Kundalini Yoga, but practicing it in a way that we can adjust our energy field to the evolving frequencies. Our energy bodies can’t be crammed into submission. To be able to align with love, they need some place to go that expands, not contracts, and nurtures, not fights.
The times also require purification of the patriarchal dominating attitude that has infected the organizations with attitudes of exclusivity, exclusion, entitlement, club mentality, and attachment to the old hierarchical paradigm.
Bringing a Subtle Feminine Approach to Kundalini Yoga
In the past we may have needed the aggressive masculine approach to break through the dark density of fear. Now we need to incorporate a more refined feminine approach that makes it possible to relax and flow with universal energies. In the past we beat ourselves up. Now we must love ourselves to elevate ourselves to the subtle realms.
This does not mean that we dilute our practice. We still need vigorous physical techniques to activate our awareness mechanisms, transform our energy, release stuck energy, and upgrade the frequency and thus receptivity of our ten bodies. But we also need a way that cultivates subtle sensitivity that includes compassion.
Over the years of personal practice and teaching, I have noticed that it takes us less time to get powerful results. We don’t have to do exercises until we burn out our adrenal glands, deplete our kidneys, and collapse from physical exhaustion.
In our meditation we can now experience that there is a place to go, to be in, to rest in. Optimally we can design our practice to both get us to the sacred space and help us stay there.
We Really Need Kundalini Yoga Now
I greatly appreciate that we have made it to 2020. And I am delighted that a new phase of our journey has begun. We need Kundalini Yoga more than ever to receive, utilize, and enjoy the current transmissions from the universe.
We need the power of Kundalini Yoga to help extricate ourselves from the darkness of the patriarchy. Fear programs that are still imprinted in our psyche must be acknowledged. Our shadow side must be exposed and released because it is what anchors us in the past and keeps us stuck in pain and suffering.
Our practice needs to include
- training ourselves to contain subtle energies in feeling awareness in our body,
- avoiding escaping into our minds and out of our bodies, and
- creating an anchor in our lower chakras and with Mother Earth.
With both grounding and awareness, we can awaken to and operate in the multidimensional realities of which we are an integral part.
Freeing Ourselves from the Past
We are currently in the process of identifying the next phase of our evolutionary process.
Our inner war can be resolved only in our higher mind and in our hearts, above the fray and drama, where we extract ourselves from the conflict. With our neutral observer, we can see how we cling to the past, how we chain ourselves to old patterns, and indulge in self-destructive beliefs and behaviors.
We don’t have to stay stuck when we are able to see patterns that create and sustain dysfunctions and abuse, both personal and systemic. As we gain a deeper understanding of our human journey and the past, we can free ourselves from its grip and move on.
Spiritual Awakening, Not Bypassing
Spiritual awakening is not about ‘spiritual bypassing.’ Our neutral mind is not an escape route. It is a support system that we desperately need to deal with and transcend our shadow. Our higher mind is a window to love and to other dimensions of reality. Awareness and acceptance of the complexity and multidimensional nature of our existence can facilitate our healing beyond what we can realize without it.
The planetary alignments in 2020 are asking us to look at how we function in life and how we relate to ourselves, each other and the world. We are being made aware of how we abuse ourselves and create unnecessary self-stress. We are experiencing that we can’t relax and feel OK in conflict and darkness.
The good news is that we no longer can or need to live in denial, cover up what we don’t like, and distract ourselves to avoid the truth. We are being given an opportunity to break through the fear into the flow. With the practice of Kundalini Yoga, we can relax into the flow because we can find it and feel it.
The Future is Now
We are in the future now!
Kundalini Yoga offers us the capacity to transform so we are able to meet the challenges of the times. How we use Kundalini Yoga is how we create our future today. The core teachings will always stand the test of time.
Something Is Different – What is it?
There is more light to see.
There are higher vibrations to feel.
There is love to open our hearts.
It is a new day for Kundalini Yoga!
Notes
*(1) This short book explains how addictions work and how trauma and abuse affect the functioning of the mind. Addiction by Dr. Devin McCauley and Dr. Cory Reich, published in 2008 by The Institute for Addiction Study, Salt Lake City, Utah. I highly recommend it.
