If you are at a point on your kundalini journey, where you are being asked to work on acceptance, detachment or surrender, you might be well be asking yourself, How?

Everything on your journey slowly but surely leads you from understanding, to hereafter learning and then doing. Detachment’s first baby steps are taught through acceptance. Once that is well established, we then get taken to detachment and then finally to the glory of surrender.

These concepts are fairly demanding for many of us. Acceptance is just the simple act of allowing something, whatever it is to be the way it is. It is a state of non-resistance. Detachment, to me means separation. It is the act of separating yourself from what is taking place, not through a lack of care or concern, but by knowing and accepting that what is, is and what needs to be, needs to be, thereby allowing oneself to be in a state of observance [ detachment]. Detachment needs to be established so well, that you react to whatever is happening with calmness, neutrality, deep acceptance and as well as total detachment.

In detachment, you are in a state of awareness where by you are the participant, while simultaneously also the one who is observing. You are doing whilst still in awareness of what you are doing. Speaking and yet in awareness of what are saying. It is a state of awareness, that needs to be developed within oneself. This state applies to your thoughts, emotions and actions.

It is knowing and practicing this at the deepest level of your being as well as in your daily life that will allow your kundalini to ascend. Knowledge without the practice of it in your life, is not going to get you where you want and need to go. One needs to accept things in one’s life, without any camouflaging. This in and of itself takes time to work on and get comfortable with.

Then we slowly get to a level of awareness, where one not only needs to detach from what is, but one needs to do it in a manner of total surrender. There cannot be even a hint of resistance. This state funnily enough after the other states feels almost like a relief. It feels like the burden you were forcing yourself to carry around, was pointless. It finally dawns on you that the heavy lifting of life can be taken care of, if you just allow it to be!

Only recently did I understand that one leads to the other, only to finally join together. Acceptance does lead you to detachment which does lead you to surrender. All taking you towards god’s blessing for you.

Funny how the entire kundalini journey is that way, initially it feels as though each part is isolated in its ways and effects on you and then one day you begin to see the dots finally joining together, to get you ready for god’s ultimate blessing.

Once your kundalini energy starts going through the different chakras, you are asked to work on and heal negative thoughts, emotions and actions. Simultaneously you will also be asked to work on universal principles that need to be awakened and practised within you.

These might be attributes you find easy or some that you might find uncomfortable. You will be asked to work on all of them, until they are practised so often, that they become one with you.

One of the most important is Love. You are love and you are asked to act from a space of love. Love is that which asks for nothing and needs nothing. It is about giving. Love is that which just expands out from within you and spreads to everyone and everything.

Another principle is Forgiveness. Your kundalini ascent, is linked closely to your ability to forgive. Inappropriate unconscious behaviour that you used to engage in, that was hurtful, harmful, mean, negative, inquisitive or controlling, is no longer appropriate for you, at your new level of awareness. You now have to choose your behaviour, consciously.

Compassion, concern for others, ends the continuous preoccupation with oneself. You will be required to show that you have the capacity to feel compassion for another because his or her pain also joins together to form part of your own pain. Eckhart Tolle calls this the pain body. In reality there is no difference, another’s pain is your own and your own pain is part of another’s. The division exists only on the level of mind.

Collectivity, In the sense that I interpret it is, what you think, do and say affects others and vice versa. You are no more important than another, whether they be a billionaire or a homeless individual. Whether someone is a different race, religion, or ethnicity there is no disparity at the level of spirit. All inequalities exist on the physical level. We all come from the same infinite source, that has created everything. Differences whether they be racial, religious, gender based, or any and all others is always only on the physical level. Once here on earth, our lives appear significantly different to one another. However all differences exist only because we are here to learn and grow and evolve and these distinctions help us because they are trying to evolve us in such a way to ensure our deepest spiritual growth.

Within kindness, it is the small acts of kindness that impact others. Little things that show appreciation make big impacts. When you do for others, and if there is some level of effort, some level of inconvenience involved in the giving and helping, and you do it graciously, then there is love and joy in your acts of kindness.

Being of service, is another principle that requires us to humble ourselves. It is often uncomfortable because we are not used to doing without wanting to receive, in return. When you do without giving any consideration to wanting or needing or keeping tabs, then there is a joy to your giving and that joy gets reflected back to you.

Security- We spend most of our living hours worried or anxious about things we need for our survival. If those needs are taken care off, then we move to satisfy our wants, which seem to expand with each passing day. This desire filled living is not conscious living. What is the difference? Well conscious living is knowing your needs will always be taken care off. If you keep your thoughts, emotions and actions in a positive state of being. Your insatiable wants however are a different issue and those will not be catered too.

Detachment- This is a concept that most of us struggle with, mainly because this requires relinquishing control. Humans find this very difficult. We want to be in charge of everything and everyone. Detaching is teaching yourself that god, spirit, consciousness can and will sort things out ONLY if you step aside. When you are asked to begin to practise this, you will also notice how easily things sort out and how you could never have been able to sort it out so perfectly as it has been worked out by the divine. So step aside and allow things to be the way they need to be and watch with amazement. Detachment is not doing nothing, it is doing with no attachment to a person, particular outcome or result.

Generosity-Giving is wonderful and needs to be inculcated especially if you find it difficult. Sharing is another principle that opens up your heart and expands your level of consciousness, towards others. Give, with your blessing, your awareness and discernment.

Integration-There can be no disconnect between thinking, feeling and doing. It has to flow as one. When there is no distinction, then you are one with the principles and one with consciousness. This is a process and time is required to practise, practise and practise till these concepts are no longer just ideas but are incorporated into every aspect of your life. You need to get to a point where you are one with all these principals and more.

This needs to be worked on until you begin to notice your life reflecting this new way of thinking, feeling and doing. Your relationships start mending, you start to see these principles working in your life, then you can be certain the integration is well and truly being incorporated into your life through you.

ONE with spirit- Becoming one with one’s own spirit is a journey. Small steps lead you towards this space. This is a place of peace, calm, clarity, and surrender. It is where your ego fears to tread. It is where the synchronicity of life happens. Life flows and you ride the wave. You do what you are required to do and you leave the rest to sort out in unison with divine will, not your own.

When divine will works in your life, what is done is not just done in the best interests of you, but for all who are involved with you too!

Your thoughts and emotions, naturally flow into actions.This is why those of us who are going through kundalini, need to be very vigilant of our thoughts and emotions, as they are the harbinger of what your actions are going to be.

Actions are the result of your thoughts. If you are uncertain about what action to take, ask for guidance. Ask for the courage to take right action. Sometimes we feel weak and vulnerable and even though we may know what the right thing to do is, we may shirk from this duty.

Doing what is right, is not easy and it is not for the faint of heart. You will have to bypass your ego, which will find reasons not to do it. You will have to bypass emotions that get heightened to fever pitch. You will have to rise above all of it and choose to do it anyway. This requires god’s help.

Knowing within oneself what the right thing to do, but not yet having the capacity to rise above one’s ego and human conditioning in order to take right action, is a fear that needs conquering. This can often feel uncomfortable, initially.

If you generally lack generosity, then being asked to open your heart enough to help others financially will require courage and faith, that you will be taken care off and the more you give the more you will receive.

If you have relationships in your family life that have gone awry, then you will be asked to forgive and mend those ties. Again this will require you being able to bypass your ego in order to say this needs doing and regardless of the pain, you believe this person has caused, you will need to forgive them. You will be asked to do everything in your power to rectify your feelings towards them, regardless of their feelings towards you.

Kundalini actions are about understanding, that you will be held responsible for yourself. Every action you take, is your responsibility. Blaming others for your behaviour is not a pardonable offence. Actions are what you put out into the world and if you put out anything that will cause another hurt or pain in anyway, you prolong and deepen your own pain and you are held responsible for the pain you cause others.

There is another way to describe this principle, it is ‘what goes around, comes around.

As kundalini rises, one of the most difficult practises you will be asked to develop is discernment. It is the ability to judge well. There might be two extremely similar situations and in one you will have to help and in another you might have to walk away. How does one know when to act and when to withhold action? This is discernment and this only comes from awareness and experience. Once again ask god to help guide your actions and to help you discern, what the right thing to do is, in each situation.

Being alert and being present in each moment of your life, will bring with it the awareness and the guidance and the enlightenment to just, KNOW.

Emotions have the power to overwhelm you and through you, everyone that comes into contact with you. Emotions are so charged with energy that they create very strong currents in the body and you cannot help but let the energy out. Most situations that create this kind of charged energy are negative and mostly the emotions you release are negative.

Negative thoughts create negative emotions, which in turn allow negative actions to take place. This is why the kundalini process is very focused on self introspection. It is your thoughts and emotions that you need to be concerned with, not others. It is ALL, about you healing the negative emotions, within you.

When asked to change unhealthy emotions within yourself, will you? These negative emotions may be anger, hate, dishonesty, irritation, impatience, intolerance and many others. Doing this is not easy and is not a one time deal.

How does one heal the negative emotions within oneself? Well when any situation causes an emotion within you, notice where you feel the emotions. You may feel it in your chest, or in your stomach, you might notice your hands getting sweaty, you might notice your heart racing. Whatever it is and wherever it is, notice it, then ask god to help heal the negative emotions you are experiencing within yourself. There needs to be acknowledgement and then help to heal.

Different situations will occur over and over to test whether you have worked on your emotions and healed them. This a gradual practise, even the same emotions will require healing over and over till they impact you less and less. Until the same situations, and the same behaviour patterns from others, stop affecting you, you are still at the mercy of your emotions and situations.

These tests will occur on days you are well rested, they will happen of days when you are buckling under with exhaustion, they will happen when you are time pressured, they will happen when you least expect it, they will happen with people whose behaviour you have a tendency to dislike.

Emotions are the blueprint of how you are coping with your life situations. When the emotions from a difficult situation, brings you to your knees, know it is time to learn and grow and accept.  Situations are just that, situations. Your reaction to what is, determines whether you see the the situation, as good or bad. No matter how pressurized your emotions become through what you perceive as a negative situation, you are meant to react to it in a neutral way. You need to react to whatever comes with acceptance and NON EMOTION.

The very same situations will occur over and over till you learn to NOT react emotionally to what is occurring. I know it is painful but the saying is practise makes perfect and you will be made to practise, until your emotions can be controlled by you in a non reactive manner.

A good mantra to practise is, ‘I am not my emotions, I am that which observes my emotions.’

There is a great deal of information on the technical aspects of each chakra. Initially you might read as much as possible because you are caught unawares, by your kundalini awakening and it’s experiences. However as you ascend higher and higher on your chakra journey, you will find less and less useful information available to you.

So how does one understand what is required? Well, if you begin your journey with trying to focus on your breath as much as possible and creating quiet spaces in between your thoughts, that which is required to heal mentally, will be apparent to you, through the quiet spaces you have created in your mind.

I believe one of the reasons I was and am able to understand what is required of me at every moment is because I started with quietenning my mind. Quiet mind can also be called the state of ‘thoughtless awareness’.This state allows you to be able to be alert to your thoughts, the moment they are happening and so allows you to heal that which requires healing and also simultaneously have access, through quiet mind, to the guidance provided to you.

When you are asked to change the unhealthy thoughts within yourself, will you? These might be negative repetitive thought patterns. It may be you being constantly critical of yourself and others.They may be thoughts that constantly reinforce issues. For example maybe you always have a habit of saying I never have enough money or the person who owes me money will never pay me back? Or I will never get married or I am always the one who is picked on. Maybe you wish ill or curse someone who has hurt you and you wish them the same pain they have caused you.

These negative thoughts have a constant effect on you, physically, mentally and emotionally. It is all interlinked. All such thoughts are not only unhelpful but what one does not understand is that they have a way of behaving like a boomerang. Throw a boomerang outwards and it always returns back to you! This is how negative thoughts work. What goes out of you returns to you.

So the question we have to ask is, how do we stop and heal these negative thought patterns of behaviour within ourselves? Well once you have established quiet mind, you are now able to be aware of your thoughts,as you have them! Once you get to this stage, you will be able to stay alert and when a negative thought, takes hold, all you have to do is ask god to help heal these negative thoughts, within you. This is a practise that needs to be made into a permanent part of your daily living.

There are three things that have an effect on you and the life you live. Your thoughts, emotions and actions. Negative thoughts, I believe have profound consequences on your health and so on your wellbeing. Your thoughts are magnets and attract what you think to you, so make sure you use them well.

When god is at the center of your life, your life will not be perfect, but you will have the capacity to cope with your life, with a sense of calmness and peace of mind. I would like to talk about kundalini and god and why I believe that this journey really needs to only be undertaken, when you have a developed a deep relationship with god.

Once the kundalini awakens, there will be a lot of challenging situations occurring simultaneously. One of the first is your capacity to face and cope with fear. No matter what  situation you are faced with, knowing god is with you, guiding, protecting and loving you, will feel like a blanket you can wrap yourself within. It is always available to you and is a comfort you will need over and over again on your path.

The entire kundalini path is about learning. Your thoughts, emotions and actions are your guide posts. It is the practise of you self reflecting on yourself and then healing yourself. When negativity engages you, you will need god’s help dispel the negativity. When negative emotions overwhelm you, you will need god’s touch to heal them. When negative actions beckon, you will need god’s firm hand guiding you onto the path of righteousness.

When we are confronted with anything that we find difficult to cope with, we can ask god for his help. Like the strength to bear the things we cannot change, we can ask for his protection, for courage, we can ask for his help to forgive those who have hurt us, we can ask for his help to be in acceptance, for a grateful heart. We can ask and we should ask. Help is only received once the request is made and no sooner.

When you live a life of busyness and have the attitude that says,” I am doing” and “I am working so hard”, your ego is in control of you and your life. God has been sidelined. Why? Because YOU are doing, and you are not leaving space in your life for GOD to do!?

Surrender might appear like weakness. However only those with deep faith and strength in god are able to surrender to his will. When you say God, may your will be done. There is power in that, more than you know.

Faith in god is not blind faith. It is a faith that says you know what is best for me and my life.

No matter what appears in your life, be in acceptance. This applies to whether you are sick, whether you are financially secure, or whether you are facing challenges. God thinks about what is best for you to learn and grow, so no matter what appears in your life, know it needs to be there and god has not left your life but is right beside you. Be in acceptance and allow god to teach you that which you need to learn and help you reach where you need to be.

Devotion to god is about living right by god. When you choose to do the the right thing versus the doing the wrong thing, you live by god’s will. Living right by god is allowing god to live through you. When god resides in your heart, you are well and truly one with god.

Once the kundalini energy is awakened, it knows it’s path. The question is always, are you walking your path? The chakras are there as guideposts for you to work through step by step which slowly leads to the cleansing of you, spiritually. The spiritual life and the physical life you live everyday are inseparable. One cannot ascend unless the two are always understood together. Spiritual laws need to be understood and then practised in your physical life. They have to become one.

The first and most essential tool that you need is quiet mind. You can achieve this as Mr Tolle suggests through focusing on your breathing as much as possible, or through meditation. Either way the point is to establish a state of mind that is able to be quiet. The aim is to always be working to increase the quiet mind you are enjoying. Practising quiet mind consciously for long periods of time, was what lead at least in part to my kundalini awakening.

Once you have this as your basis, you can begin to work on other issues that will come to the surface. Several issues will require your attention. These will move from mental to physical to emotional health, which leads to taking right actions in your life.

Each kundalini journey is partly the same for everyone and partly tailored to you, personally. You will be affected by things I may not be and vice versa, so it will be important for you to work through things that come to the surface for you and you will most certainly find these challenging.

How do you know what you need to work on? That depends on what comes up for you. Do any of these issues come up for you? Fear, irritation, anger, impatience, tiredness, criticism, hatred, vindictiveness, jealousy, money, power, materialism, drugs of different kinds, control issues and on and on. If yes, then those will require a change of behaviour on your part. Quiet mind and god together can and will heal these issues for you.

Quiet mind allows you to be in the present moment and without your awareness in this moment you cannot notice your thoughts, emotions and actions and you cannot work on changing your behavioural patterns to what you are experiencing.

God is always guiding you, however in order to hear his guidance you need to develop quiet mind. This space allows awareness and awareness allows you to see god’s guidance everywhere. You could read something, a friend could say something, you could watch something on tv, you could hear a song. God will use anything and everything to give you your reply. The key is to be aware and present.

Once kundalini has been awakened, you have begun the process of evolving. You could say you are on the kundalini express train, which will make stops and you will see picturesque views, you will go through dark tunnels, and the journey will sometimes exhaust you but the joy comes from knowing one day the destination you have worked towards for years, will arrive!

The simplest way to communicate what it is, is to say that kundalini is a primordial energy force or shakti. The word kundalini, essentially means coil. It is also called the serpent energy force. When it lies dormant it is situated at the base of the spine. Once this energy is released it begins a spiritual awakening in you. This energy, life force is within each and every person. This awakening sometimes occurs spontaneously and sometimes it uncoils itself after long periods of deep meditation.

There are many stories of awakening, some horrifying and some blissful. This is because sometimes people have tried to forcefully awaken this energy and that can come with disastrous results. I would not advise you to force this awakening in anyway.

I will explain what happened to me. I was practising focusing on my breath to establish, quiet mind like Eckhart Tolle suggests in his book The Power of Now. As with most things, I move towards perfecting the things I practise, so I practised more and more and more. Once this was working in my life and I started to feel peaceful and calm, I started to work on my emotions and that worked well and so I just continued and continued. The more things were sorting out without conflict, the more I practised.

One day, everything I was practising and enjoying practising went very dark. I felt this heaviness within me, nothing would alter it. I felt as though I was metaphorically being held under water and yet I could see the light streaming through the water but I could not get my head above the surface of the water. I suddenly said out loud Lord Is this the pain body within me? My interpretation of the pain body as Mr Tolle explains it is this, every experience we have leaves a residue of pain and this merges with pain from our past and this accumulated pain is called in his words the pain body.

After I said those words, I was suddenly pinned. I could not move. I felt lit up from within. It felt as though a million light bulbs got switched on inside me at the exact same moment. After this I felt a lot lighter, like half my body weight suddenly left me. It was after this experience that the symptoms of kundalini began.

Even though I was experiencing the symptoms of kundalini, I was completely ignorant of what I was experiencing. I was unaware of the fact that what I was experiencing had a name?! It took a further seven months before I came across the word kundalini and understood what had been occuring in my life. It had a name, and I could now read up on it and understand it better. This is god saying, when it’s time for you to know, you will know. I believe a deep relationship with god, is essential to cope with the journey you get taken on through this kundalini awakening.

All will be revealed to you, when you need to know it, and no sooner. Everything happens in order. You can only resonate with concepts and ideas and perspectives when you’re ready too!

May the kundalini journey across the chakras, begin.