Friday, August 16, 2013

Kundalini




Kundalini
© Tuesday May Thomas 2013

We all have our own unique Kundalini stories.... And if you have yet to experience one- it could sneak up on you when you least expect it- as it did with me. Om and Love <3

The year is 1991. I live in Ireland. I'm 19 years old and proud to have spent several years back-up singing in a funk band called 'The Way It Is'.

Tuesday May back-up singing with
The Way It Is circa 1990
I meet my (then) boyfriend at the Rock School in Balleyfermot. He's a bass player with such a thick Dublin accent, the Irish along the countryside have trouble understanding him.  We form a band together, write songs, play gigs- and I move from back of the stage to 'front and center' as a lead vocalist. In our time together, we drink 5,000 pints of Guinness (I know- you thought that was impossible ha ha), and explore l.s.d. Three years later we are still together. I'm twenty-one, going to yoga class, and busking on Grafton Street. Busking is a term used to describe a person performing music on the street. My boyfriend is recording an album with a popular artist in Wales, and invites me to stay for a while. A Rock & Roll-Yoga Lifestyle, a goat, and a flat rock (perhaps a vortex) in Wales ignites my first Kundalini experience...

Before we go on, let me explain something. Some of you have responded to this post, to me personally by stating "how can you be 'spiritual' while drinking beer, smoking hash and taking l.s.d. You are setting a bad example etc." Remember this blog is called Confessions of a Spiritual Apprentice. Some folks think this particular story takes away from my credibility as a spiritual teacher, versus gaining me some pedestal. Some come from a background where social drinking and drugs were the norm; as was my life growing up in Ireland. It doesn't make us bad people, nor does it stand to make our stories of spiritual transformation invalid. It is truth. Please humor me as I paint a picture of 5,000 pints of Guinness!..  

One's past inevitably leads to one's present. In my stories, I stumble onto a path of spiritual studies while 'socializing' in the above fashion. A warrior is allowed to have a past-we all do. I know reiki masters and spiritual teachers with great integrity who have come from heavy drug addiction, or an unpopular past-time (to some) such as stripping etc. This does not take anything away from their credibility. In fact this may allow teachers  a wider spectrum of compassion and understanding, as they hold space for students of similar backgrounds. This is how enlightenment works (sometimes). I do not advocate my route of experience to be the way for others to follow. I merely offer a colorful palate to reflect upon.


While visiting in Wales I have plenty of downtime. I practice yoga and meditation daily, atop a flat rock away from the recording studio and cottage area. A friendly goat accompanies me, and continues to visit each day.  I decide he is a time traveller goat- because one moment he is not there at all, and the next he is standing less than three feet away. I am never startled, but more impressed by his quiet passage and posture. His ability to hold 'standing goat pose' for two hours (minimum) is encouraging. I attempt to copy his stillness while balancing on one leg in Vriksasana/Tree Pose.

On the final evening of my visit, we (my boyfriend, the band, and the record producer) walk through pitch black dirt roads to the local pub. It is here I realize just how far out in the wild we are. This tiny town has less than two hundred inhabitants. There are no street-lamps, few cars, and no lights shining from a far and away city I can see, no matter what direction I look. I enjoy having a pint (which often means having at least five over the duration of pub-time. This is warm up for the afters. The 'afters' are the drinks you drink after the pub closes!

Back at the cottage we blast Oasis on a 'kicking' stereo system (remember it's the early 90's) and begin the afters with tall cans of luke warm Heinekin and cigarettes, while the guys make hash joints. These band mates are crazy drunk! There is much horse-play and laughter accompanied by dancing on the pool table. I am inebriated and can barely get up to pee. In a drunken~stoned haze I wonder about my goat friend. I leave early tomorrow morning, before my usual visit to the flat rock. Maybe I won't see him again. I decide I must make an escape from the craziness of this mini party and go out into the wild to see my goat one last time. I duck away and push at the heavy wooden door sloppily. I don't remember it being this hard to open, but then again I'm plastered. I check to see if it's locked and it's not. I gain all my strength and push the door so hard I end up falling to the ground on the other side of it. At this moment Alice in Wonderland has nothing on me.

A staggered fall pushes me to the ground. I lay helpless as the door slams shut behind me. It's hard to focus when your dizzy drunk... and why is it so dark out here? I cannot lift my head, or even feel where my head is in relation to my body. Maybe I have slipped through some wormhole to an unknown land.  Just then I hear a blur of music and shouting from inside the cottage. Feeling relieved I peel my face and palms from the gravel and leaves I lay upon. Momentarily I wonder if I should find the magic door again and go back inside. But wait. What about the goat? He needs me to say goodbye. Gathering my warrior power, I decide I have come too far to turn back, and make my way to the flat rock. I crawl on hands and knees. Using my inner-compass, I slowly navigate the way.

In heavy darkness I sense the goat is nowhere to be found, but I decide to sit atop my special rock anyway. Out of breath and partially exhausted, I do my best to sit up tall and perform a lazy half lotus pose. Just as my foot comes into place, I am transported to another realm where sobriety rules. I am no longer tired, out of breath or  drunk. In fact, every part of my body is now turned on and tuned in- to another part of myself that I find hard to describe because I have never felt this before. A strange tingle at the bottom of my spine causes me to I close my eyes and sit a little taller. A swooping of circular energy begins to swirl around my body. The swirling is accompanied by a deep and rhythmical ‘voom, voom, voom, voom’. The sound gets louder and louder. I feel my hair being blown around and my clothes are flapping in the windy reverberation of this sound. With closed eyes I decide a helicopter has approached and is now hovering above me. This can be the only explanation for this madness. I open my eyes to view the insanity of this chopper. At the precise moment I open my eyes, there is no sound, no wind, no chopper- and no propelling energy. I close my eyes again, and the sounds and feelings return. This time a deep vibration at the base of my spine begins to travel upwards. As it does, I feel the rotation of this helicopter energy swell up around me and through my spine. The vibration moving up my spine becomes more and more intense. It feels like I could possibly be swooped upward into the eye of this energy hurricane.

I again open my eyes. This causes a ‘pause’ to the surge of energy moving up my spine, and it also stops the swirling winds and humming sounds that encircle me. I quickly look around for my goat in this darkness. 'Maybe he knows what's going on'. I think to myself. I close my eyes for the final time, and the 'voom, voom, voom, voom' noise becomes so loud- I feel it (the only way I can describe it is-) pierce me. It's like when I got my nose or nipple pierced, except this piercing is happening on an invisible plane I can feel surging inside and outside of my body. The energy continues moving up my spine, and with a crack- breaks through the top of my head. As it does, the swooping wind and blowing noise that once surrounded and filled me up- finally stops. As it does, I open my eyes again and softly fall sideways. My face gently meets with the cooling smoothness of the flat rock. Again? I say out loud in a humorous tone, remarking on my ability to fall more than once on this evening. I then lay in stillness for some time and begin to quietly sob. I touch the crown of my head, where the energy whirlwind broke through me, and feel the bump from diving into the shallow end (see blog post entitled Shallow End) of the pool at the age of ten.

Five years later while working at the Bodhi Tree Bookstore, I share my helicopter/whirlwind/spinal shock experience with a fellow employee who responds; “That, my friend was the Kundalin rising in you!” He then tracked down several passages from a variety of metaphysical and spiritual books and told me to "Read". While they all certainly reflected similar experiences to mine, not one of them mentioned anything about a goat.~ Om © Tuesday May Thomas 2013



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Wednesday, August 7, 2013

Shallow End


Shallow End
(c)TuesdayMayThomas

I got such gluff about my weight when I was a kid. Anytime I would jump in the pool during summer, all the kids would scream and run for cover because they complained I was a ‘big fat whale’. Apparently my belly-flops caused them to get splashed, even though they were already wet from swimming.

One day I felt confident diving into the shallow end of my new babysitter's pool. I was over 5'5 and the shallow end was only 2 foot deep. I dove straight in, smacked my head on the bottom- and blacked out. My poor babysitter was un-nerved. She said they pulled me from the pool and I was out cold for ten minutes. I was apparently breathing, yet lifeless. It was 1980. People didn't call ambulances or 911 the way they do these days. I was a kid with a concussion. Happens all the time, right? I figure the concussion was an attunement of sorts. A seventh chakra awakening that came early on.

 The only reason why I had a babysitter and got a concussion by diving into the shallow end of the pool was because of that weird phone call; which I still say sounded like my step-sister's husband, Miller (See previous blogpost entitled 'Latch Key Kid'). (c)TuesdayMayThomas




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