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Awakening the Kundalini: Understanding Life's Sacred Energy

• Douglas James Cottrell PhD • Season 2 • Episode 19

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What exactly is Kundalini energy, and why has it fascinated spiritual seekers across traditions for thousands of years? Dr. Douglas James Cottrell takes us on a profound journey into understanding this mysterious life force that exists within each of us.

The Kundalini, Dr. Douglas explains, is the fundamental creative energy that rises from our reproductive centers through the seven chakras of our body—known in biblical terms as the "seven churches." This same force that enables physical procreation can, when properly channeled, unlock extraordinary spiritual awareness and abilities. As this energy ascends through different energy centers, it transforms our perception, potentially allowing us to experience spiritual dimensions as clearly as we perceive the physical world.

When fully awakened, a Kundalini experience creates what Dr. Douglas describes as "complete, absolute pleasure" and "all-encompassing love." The sensation envelops you in "the most wonderful, beautiful cocoon of the softest, most sensuous feeling of cloth or love that you can imagine." It's a state of both detachment from worldly concerns and profound connection with everything—a paradoxical experience beyond ordinary consciousness.

The conversation explores the balance needed between physical and spiritual expressions of this energy. Practices like celibacy in spiritual traditions aim to build this energy for spiritual development, but Dr. Douglas cautions against extreme approaches. "Don't drop what you're doing and become celibate right now," he advises, comparing such sudden shifts to someone who's never ridden a motorcycle immediately "cranking on the throttle." This energy must be approached gradually—like a mighty river that begins as a manageable trickle.

Most fascinating is Dr. Douglas's explanation of how this energy manifests when fully awakened, with practitioners sometimes seeing energy emanating from their hands "like flashlight beams" or experiencing expansions of consciousness that traditional religious art has attempted to capture for centuries. The same force that creates physical life can open doorways to spiritual dimensions—when approached with patience, balance, and respect.

Join us as Dr. Douglas demystifies this powerful energy that connects our physical and spiritual selves. Whether you're curious about Eastern spiritual concepts, interested in the science of consciousness, or seeking to understand your own spiritual experiences, this episode offers profound insights into the essence of life energy itself.

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Announcer:

Welcome to Wake Up with Dr Douglas James Cottrell, your source for helpful information, advice and tips to live your life in a mindful way in this increasingly chaotic world. For over four decades, Dr Douglas has been teaching people how to develop their intuition and live their lives in a conscious way. His news and views of the world tomorrow, today, are always informative and revealing. And now here's your host, Dr Douglas James Cottrell.

Douglas James Cottrell:

Hey everybody, welcome to the show tonight. Always exciting, Les is coming up with some amazing topics and I really appreciate you going to our website and signing up for the Wake Up Podcast. Douglasjamescottrell. com. Support us. Click on that big blue banner. We'd love to have you and we'll give you a shout out every time you support the show. So, Les, what's on for today?

Les Hubert:

Hi, Doug. Today's question is about Kundalini. What is it and can it be dangerous?

Douglas James Cottrell:

Well, you know a lot of people when they hear that term, kundalini, it's like you know, spaghetti. I mean, it's just kind of like, doesn't make sense. It's a term that comes from the East and it talks about this energy that's inside our body, that rises up from the reproductive centers of our body. It's life energy and as it goes up through the seven-- in the Bible they're called the seven churches, in the East it's called the seven chakras, the seven energy centers, if you will. They go through from the gonads, the reproductive center, up through the abdomen, the heart, the throat and into the upper two crown chakra, the pituitary and pineal the pineal being the crown chakra where your spiritual awareness, the gateway through meditation, opens up and you are able to perceive the spiritual dimensions and heavens above and all those other wonderful things that we associate the spiritual gifts with. However, that life force, referred to in some books as virtue or the creative energy, is that force within your body that you're trying to touch upon.

Douglas James Cottrell:

And people sometimes have spontaneous connections with the kundalini force and when it happens, if you're lucky enough to have it at least once, it's a feeling of complete, absolute pleasure. It's just so being at peace. You just-- you know people could come and say you know you lost everything you own and you would go, "I don't care, this is, this is you're so detached. It's all encompassing love. It's a sense that goes through you, around you. It is pure, heavenly love, and I'm not talking about arousal or carnal energies. I'm talking about this, this feeling that envelopes you. Until you experience it, I can only describe it in like terms to give you some reference to what it could be or what it might feel like. But it's like having, if I can put it in a sexual sense, it's like having a prolonged orgasm. You just, you completely forget about everything, but you're in, intently in the middle of everything.

Douglas James Cottrell:

So this force inside of you comes from the reproductive center. It's life itself. And it moves up through the different chakras, or energy wheels, which have both a blessing and-- I don't want to say a negative aspect-- but a downside to them. For instance, when you get to the throat, the throat acts like a cork in a bottle. It prevents that energy from going up to the higher pineal and pituitary chakras in your brain, in your head. And so the throat is both a feeling of release of hormones, which is growth, and wonderful feelings, but it's also the center for fear. So you have these fear and hormonal balance, or shall I say euphoric feelings and fear, back and forth. The same in the stomach, the same in the reproductive centers. And so these forces in your body are constantly stirring and transmuting and going around the body in the different energy spots. And of course they have, like you know, like an overabundance and a lack, and so your intention to be a spiritual-minded person is to have the balance between the same.

Douglas James Cottrell:

The reproductive center is always overworked, so we're always aroused, we're always thinking of lustful thoughts. But it's also the creative energy for life-giving, to procreate, but also that's the life energy that starts that spiritual energy. Oh wow. The spiritual energy starts there and goes up the body. Now, that's why, in some of the world's great religions and or spiritual practices from all the world's great religions, this idea of celibacy is intended to build up this energy from the gonads or the reproductive centers so that it will build up and go up through the body to the next chakra and the next chakra and the next chakra, so that it goes to the top chakra, your spiritual center, and opens up and you can perceive the spiritual dimensions and worlds as clearly as you and I are visualizing each other here on this video. So that energy that we call creative, life-giving energy can be overly used for sexual expression. It can be more focused on the spiritual illumination, and so you have to balance the two.

Douglas James Cottrell:

However, people tend to go for celibacy and think they're on a spiritual path and that's like saying, okay, I love food all my life and now I'm not going to eat a thing again because I want to be spiritual. It can't be. I mean, people do ultimately go for it--s ome people, rare people, rarely people have this experience of practicing celibacy for years. But, on balance, if you want to practice intermittent celibacy or shall we say, abstinence would may be a better word, then that helps that spiritual force or energy work on the spiritual side of you and you develop spiritually. That's a very basic explanation of what this force that we call kundalini or this life-giving force that is out there. People who practice spiritual healing, reiki and pranic healing and distant healing and laying on of hands all that has the use of that creative energy. You know, laying on of hands is the same life-giving energy going out through the hands to somebody who's ill or sick or needs energy. But the force that's going out is the creative, life-giving energy.

Douglas James Cottrell:

Now, the secret is not to think that you are the battery and you're the one that's, you know, giving the boost to somebody who has got a low battery. It's, Yes, are, you are to some degree, but where did the electricity come from in the first place? From God Almighty, from the universe. And so, as a conduit, you're focusing and praying and sending the energy. But that energy that's more powerful comes from around you. It surrounds you like electricity is around us all the time. To give a very crude example of the life force around us. Even trees and bushes and, you go hug a tree and you feel good. Well, because the tree is giving off this energy. And if you can see light around an energy, you can see an aura around a tree. You can see auras around people. And when people are at the top of their game, so to speak, practicing taking care of themselves including, you know, practicing absence, the aura expands around them because their vitality is increasing. So you can look at kundalini as a life vitality that can be used for pleasurable procreation aspects or it can be used for spiritual purposes and powers, but, but it's the same force, same energy.

Les Hubert:

So, as it travels through the different chakra systems, do the chakras transform the energy into different frequencies or do they just use it the way it is?

Douglas James Cottrell:

Well, that's a pretty good question and a pretty good thought. Every chakra has its own weakness, right? So the energy coming out from the creative base energy is going to affect that chakra point. And if you can't control it, it's going to overdo it and it's going to embellish to the point where, you know, now your appetites are increased. You know, and you start to overeat and overdrink and you're getting immense pleasure out of eating. Okay, where the energy could be better used to balance the desire fo r pleasure of eating and obesity and things that balance to strength and building the body and making the body physically strong and working longer hours and being able to have a balanced body, where the nutrition going into your body is used to build up the body, not to evoke the emotion of shame upon the body. The emotions of the chakras are also there. The shame of the body is being the glutton to be- what's the word-p romiscuous. The overuse of the gonads is again bringing shame upon the body.

Douglas James Cottrell:

So it goes through the body. And I've locked onto your use of the word frequency. So these spiritual centers have a frequency that you're trying to bring into balance so that that frequency can expand and that force of that energy, which is coordinated with a spiritual gift, is embellished. Like the solar plexus, which is beneath the breastbone and above the navel. The solar plexus chakra, you become more clear- feeling or clairsentient. Your intuition or premonition, precognition and just feeling things is embellished and increased. The same as if you go to the top, to the pituitary. Your ability in the visual senses like clairvoyance, visions, dreams, being able to perceive things, prophecy and prediction, you know that's all embellished as well. So that's the reason one should practice or embellish the spiritual forces that are the creative energy in the bottom of the body, going up through the body, enhancing the spiritual gifts in the body, amplifying those spiritual abilities and gifts as I've just mentioned but a few of them.

Les Hubert:

So let's say, if somebody wanted to become more spiritual, they would bypass the lower energy centers and then utilize it as it rose to the upper energy centers.

Douglas James Cottrell:

Can't bypass anything.

Les Hubert:

Oh really, oh, oh, okay, so it still has to go through the gonads and the first, second, third...

Douglas James Cottrell:

Jacob's Ladder, one rung at a time, one energy going up through the body. It's kind of like saying, "okay, I want to bypass the staircase, I want to be at the top." Well, how did you get there? One step at a time. If there's seven steps and you wanted to be on the seventh step without taking the previous six, you're going to fall on your face. And it's the same as if you're the first step and you keep standing there stamping your feet enjoying the first step. Unless you take the next one and go up the ladder with effort, you're stuck. And then, of course, in between, the same way, you're stuck at certain things.

Douglas James Cottrell:

You know, you have the heart chakra. There's not much difference between love and hate. The same emotion, expressed differently. You might express it more the abundance of love or the absence of love. The absence of love is evil. The abundance of love is to be godlike or to have that unconditional love. You see, so it's the two aspects in the same place. One has--w ell, they both have opposites, or they both have a plus and a minus, for lack of a better term, plus or minus. And what's the purpose of that? Well, it's to learn where the center line is, where the marker is, where the balance point is. And when that happens, then you build up the energy, you overcome the weaknesses of that chakra and you overcome the strengths of those chakras so you don't abuse them and overuse them. And then you build on the next step. And so that later on you have a full staircase that you can run from the bottom right up to the top.

Les Hubert:

S o if somebody wanted to be celibate, they would just-- so what would happen to the energy? It would just go through all the chakras up to the upper, upper level?

Douglas James Cottrell:

No, if you want to be celibate, then you're storing up this energy, Oh, okay, sexual energy. What happens when you have all this pent-up sexual energy? Arousal, deviation, fantasies, sexual activities become all encompassing. You know your mind's desire, Oh, okay, unless you have a spiritual practice. So you build energy to spiritual energy to And I see, and as long as you're using it, laying on of hands and practicing spiritual things, it, it. Okay, become somewhat of a sex maniac.

Les Hubert:

Kundalini? Does it --d oes dangerous?

Douglas James Cottrell:

Yes, when it becomes excessive. You build up the Kundalini and, unless you have a use for it, sexual depravity comes from it. You start to fantasize and your mind starts to run wild about all these sexual fantasies, abuses and imagination, and on and on. Remember, the mind is one of the best sexual arousal organs we have. Sex starts in the mind. So yes, it can be, you know, it can be misused. Put it that way. I don't think I want to say it's bad, it's just misused.

Les Hubert:

Because I remember reading there was one case where this it was a young man I saw this years ago on um on TV and this he had stimulated the kundalini. He went too quickly and they said, before he passed away you could see it shooting out of his fingertips and I was like, what the... what was that?

Douglas James Cottrell:

Yeah, I alluded to it earlier where the energy fields around the body, the aura, starts to expand and this energy that's inside of you is real. It's a force. And so people who have quote-unquote spontaneous kundalini experiences, energy comes out of their hand like flashlight beams. It comes out of the sole of their feet like flashlight beams. It comes out of their chest like a big flood of flashlight. It comes out of their head and you see religious paintings with people having horns on their head. They're painted. What are they? That's the Kundalini coming out of the pineal. So that energy is like, you used the term vibration before. Right? That's what you're seeing. So if you have a little wire, electric wire, and you see it, and you put it up, even if it's static electricity, you put it up to a light socket, you can see a little jump of electricity coming out of your fingers. We've all had that. Or if we haven't had seen that little spark of light, we've touched the light switch and zap, we feel this little electrical discharge. Well, multiply that umpteen times. Coming out of the body, out of the chest, out of the solar plexus, and people have been able to see that. For the people who can see auras, they will see the person's aura exaggerating and the person experiencing it, you know what happens? They go to a place like this behind me. That's what they see.

Les Hubert:

ou.

Douglas James Cottrell:

And they're in that spiritual, I'm going to say dimension, but let's call it plural dimensions, planes of reality or existence. That they can't, we don't, as humans don't normally see in a regular basis. Or when we have that door opening up from the ability of the Kundalini which forced to get us you know, it's the rocket fuel to get us up there in space. This is what we see. Of course, we have no reference point, we have no place to.. no bearing on this. Right? I mean, if you're out there, which way is home, right. oh my God, yeah. Which way is up, which way is down?

Douglas James Cottrell:

Okay. So that's what happens when one has a kundalini conscious experience that opens up all the chakras at the same time. Wow. Not too many people will tell you that, but I know about that. And so when you have this opening of all the chakras, all the consciousness, all the spiritual abilities, I point to this nebula as saying it's something like that. Of course it's different, but that'll give you the idea. If you have control of this, feel it as the most exciting, benevolent feeling. You're not opening up. It comes to my mind to say it's like fire hoses going off out of you. Fire hose energy, right, water, and so, before that happens, if you do not get that far, you have this feeling like being wrapped up in the most wonderful, beautiful cocoon of the softest, most beautiful, most sensuous feeling of cloth or love that you can imagine.

Douglas James Cottrell:

And so those are real experiences that you, my friends out there, Les, and our viewers will experience if they go along this path. But I caution everybody don't drop what you're doing and become celibate right now or tomorrow, when you hear me talking about this. Allow yourself to abstain. Allow yourself to eat a proper diet. You don't need to do yoga exercises and meditate for hours and be celibate. No, no, no, no. It's like okay, I'm going to ride a motorcycle. I've never been on one in my life. Just let me at it. Crank on the throttle and boom. Oh boy, yeah, faster strikes.

Douglas James Cottrell:

So, like all spiritual forces, as my mentor, Reverend Alex Holmes, God bless him, once said, energy, spiritual energy is like a mighty river. It begins with a single trickle and as it keeps going downstream, it becomes more forceful and it becomes a mighty river and it becomes a raging river downstream. You can control that. If you start off with a trickle, you can control all the way down. So when you become a master or a masterful, spiritual aware person, you can control that raging energy and you can send it out with your hands to do healing. You can materialize things out of thin air. You can go to these places and know where to come back, because you can take a shuttle out there and back, because you're aware and experienced and it's natural. So go slow, please go slow, otherwise mental abrasions and confusions will follow if you attempt to rush. I guarantee it.

Les Hubert:

So this energy is it the same as what Reiki people use? Is it the same energy essentially?

Douglas James Cottrell:

A rose is known by many names, but a rose is still a rose.

Les Hubert:

Okay.

Douglas James Cottrell:

I think I heard that someplace. But this energy inside of you is that creative energy. You can make a baby with that energy. It takes two people coming together, but the two forces, male and female if you will coming together, but the two forces, male and female, if you will, when they come together, that energy makes a baby. It creates life. Not only does it create the embryo and the physical form, but the life, the life goes into that.

Les Hubert:

It's interesting. I was reading a study not too long ago and it said that people who they want to have a child and they consummate the child in love, the child usually is very well balanced, very well, it's just. It's like an almost idyllic situation. But those who have like an oopsie and that didn't matter. And then and they said there are many times that the child could be probably could have health problems, could be problematic in nature. I always thought that was interesting because love is the essential energy. So all this goes back to the source, which comes from love.

Douglas James Cottrell:

I wouldn't be so definite if I were you, les. Okay, every time I say this is the way I know the universe is going to slap me on the wrist. So I mean, there's lots of children that you know, know, from a certain perspective, what comes to my mind is they have to be here. Oh, I see rush here and they, you know where's the first next available vehicle. I need to be here. I have a special spiritual mission now.

Douglas James Cottrell:

I'm not going to say anything about what you just said, other than to say that there might be, you know, other things that happen that are beyond what you said in a sort of definite way. So it's kind of like, yes, love and the creation of love and all those things to go forward definitely have to help, but also the mindset of the parents, right, they're hoping and praying and they're looking to have. And then on the other side, you know all of a sudden, whoops, we didn't plan this one, what are we going to do? Well, what the heck, we can afford one more you know, I don't want anybody emailing us and being taking issue with that.

Les Hubert:

I understand.

Douglas James Cottrell:

I have a tendency to think in black and white terms.

Les Hubert:

I apologize.

Douglas James Cottrell:

No, no, you don't. I just said don't be so definite, because I know, you know, this place out here exists. I've never been there, but look at it Right, you know. Can we say is this the right place, or is that the right place, I don't know. But the point is not to be so definite. What you were saying was very, very correct, that love to create, life, to procreate is the best. But there are a little lesser steps as well. But it doesn't mean that it takes away much for the person. They're not punished. So put it that way, oh sure.

Les Hubert:

For our Christian listeners out there. Why is Kundalini sometimes illustrated as a snake? Well, it is Because they would have it with the Bible and everyone's like, hmm, the snake in the Garden of Eden, yeah, and the.

Douglas James Cottrell:

DNA.

Douglas James Cottrell:

Right, it looks like a snake and you'll see that in ancient times the snake, or two snakes, wrapped around a single sword or emblem or something that goes back beyond carbon dating, it's always been there. So that's the kundalini, that's a sign of life. It's also something else. I mean back in the day when I was talking about it on a rock someplace in, you know, Lemuria, maybe I understood more. But today it's kind of like hmm, but think about it, it's a snake. I mean there's a sexual connotation to it, the idea that if you look at semen, you know and you think about, you know the little particles that go over and they merge with the egg, they look like a snake, you know.

Douglas James Cottrell:

Yeah so the depicting of that is kind of like, metaphorically speaking, that it represents something or there's some reference. But the point being is that life is life. Who is going to be out there in a Christian world and say life is bad? Nobody, god created life. He breathed the breath of life into the first humans.

Douglas James Cottrell:

So, whatever connotation, whatever our Christian believers, brethren and friends, as I said, don't be so definite, because whatever you are, the Lord, god Almighty, will find a way to say did you consider this or maybe that? But in essence, life is good. There's no such thing as bad life. There are difficulties and challenges, and we all come into the world through our genetic makeup plus our soul DNA, which is the consciousness of the soul, of every experience we've had in places out here and the heavens above, as well as the places in the world. And so the soul's DNA I don't know what that looks like, but I'm assuming that it will look similar is a combination of two making a third, two things coming together to make a distinct third being. And so, as we look at ourselves and this idea of the life force coming together, the spiritual force coming together, you know, the spirit and the physical come together, two making one we have a complete entity or being as we are.

Les Hubert:

Well, thank you, doug, for another great podcast. For those of you who want to support our show, please go to douglashdamescoutrellcom. You can click on the big blue banner to subscribe. And a shout out to Joan and Eddie for your support.

Douglas James Cottrell:

We thank you very much. God bless everyone. Peace and prosperity.

Announcer:

Thank you very much for listening to Wake Up. If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to subscribe so you'll be notified when a new episode is posted, and we'd greatly appreciate your review of our show on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts to let others know about the great content we're producing. For more about Dr Douglas' self-development classes, books and other related products, please visit his website douglasjamescottrell. com. Until next time, we wish you all of God's blessings health, wealth and peace of mind.