Kundalini and the Tarot

Once I train to work consciously with
the fire of my own transformation and awakening—
I become the Discerner
with the capacity to experience a new world view.
I have prepared myself to see.

A few years ago, I woke up from a powerful dream—a dream in which I was asked to develop a cure for all illness. In that post-dream space, before rising to full waking, I acknowledged that we already have that cure flowing through our energy field. We have the fire of our individuated consciousness, our kundalini energy, stored and ready for awakening.

Kundalini is a psycho-spiritual energy, the energy of consciousness. It is the primordial dormant energy present in three-and-a-half coils at the base of your spine. Kundalini is like the seed of your sacred nature. It is the propulsion for spiritual rebirth. In fact, it can bring you through a second evolution as profound as the evolution you went through from sperm and ovum into human infant. This second evolutionary process of refining spiritual and psychic perception requires the cleaning out of obscurities and unconscious attitudes that hold you tight and rigid…afraid and too small.

Perhaps you have sensed the uncoiling of this energy of enlightenment and felt it moving in your spine, in your body. There are practices, entire trainings, and schools that focus on preparing our bodies to accommodate the awakening and channeling of an energy so potent that when running unobstructed up your spine, it radiates outward. And everything it touches is immediately invited into completion, into spiritual awakening.

The ancient mystical texts contain stories of this kundalini energy. Such as the story of Jesus walking through the streets when a woman in the crowd (a woman who had been bleeding for 12 years) reached out and touched the hem of his robe. The moment her hand touched Jesus’ robe she was immediately healed. Texts from other wisdom traditions tell stories of awakened masters walking into a space and, because of his or her presence, the entire environment is immediately charged with healing energy. As this energy permeated the air, unspoken words of wisdom suddenly became available to those who had prepared themselves to listen—to those who had ears to hear.

These stories are not myths.

This energy of awakened awareness, unbound from constriction and misgivings, is my birth right. In fact, I am that. And I am also in form—walking and living in an experience of embodied dualism. However, I am not condemned to duality. Rather, I am being asked to wake up this energy of consciousness inside form so that form itself becomes awake and is Divinized. When matter (the physical body) is lit up—when it is filled with this energy of consciousness—the elixir that cures all illness arrives. This elixir is the cosmic fire written about; the fire that does not burn a bush, or a properly prepared human.

The following is an excerpt from a writing by Gyaneshwara (a famous saint of Maharashtra). He says:

Kundalini is one of the greatest energies.
The whole body of the seeker starts glowing because of the rising of the Kundalini.
Because of that, unwanted impurities in the body disappear.
The body of the seeker suddenly looks very proportionate (beautiful)
and the eyes look bright and attractive... and the eyeballs glow.

For those familiar with the Tarot, this transformative energy is represented throughout the deck, but never more boldly than in the Tower Card.

The Tower references an energy whose purpose is to tear down the limiting systems of the world and old ways of thinking, seeing, and expressing. Like the energy of Shiva, it destroys and births simultaneously. It is a tantric force capable of ripping everything in two, and capable of unifying.

The Tower energy is change at its wildest. It will deconstruct…. and it will open new space. It's like the kundalini energy in your body which must take down your personal limiting systems so you can access new vision. It is the energy that, like a lightning flash up your spine, will reduce your Tower of ideas to rubble. It’s a wild energy, one to tame rather than destroy… or foolishly rush or ignore.

This kundalini energy is essential to my evolution. For once I develop the capacity or willingness to unbind from my misinterpretations and reactivity, and once I train to work consciously with the fire of my own transformation and awakening, I become the Discerner with the capacity to experience a new world view. I have prepared myself to see.

Beyond myth, or flashy stories, or hopes about enlightenment, we must train to emanate the "cure.” We must keep our bodies energetically strong, vital, and purposeful. In service to a greater human awakening, I can heal myself and offer my healing to the greater community of humans.... so it too remains vital and alive, capable of transforming.

This is the reason
we were made—
for this ache
that finally opens us,
for this struggle,
this grace
that scorches us
toward one another
and into
the blazing day.
—Jan Richardson

I share this recorded Kundalini Breathing Practice with you. It is a practice from the Nine Gates Mystery School, recorded for our Initiates. Please join us in our vow of service to such an essential awakening.