When Bria went to sleep in Bali, she felt her body press into the two-inch mattress that separated her from a slab of concrete that would be her home for the next ten days. A mosquito net hung overhead. The sounds of the jungle sung in the distance. And the shadows of bugs crawled about. For this New Yorker, the jungle just got real, real fast.
The silent meditation retreat had officially begun.
No talking. No exercise. No meat.
For the next ten days, she’d join a small group of others to explore the inner workings of the mind and…hopefully…inner peace. Each morning, she’d awake at 4am with the others to meditate silently, be fed a humble vegetarian meal, meditate more, eat, receive instruction from the meditation teacher, and meditate again for a total of 12-14 hours logged for the day. This is the Vipassana way, and for anyone interested in this lineage of practice, it continues to grow as one of the more popular options for spiritual seekers throughout the world, especially since it’s technically free for first-time practitioners (donations are accepted).
Everything seemed to be going according to Bria’s expectations. The accommodations were monk-like compared to the lush villa she stayed in before. The meditation practice felt familiar to what she had begun practicing years ago. The silence felt liberating compared to the frantic energy of the western way. Then suddenly, her experience took a rapid turn.
It was day six and she joined her group for morning meditation for what began much like the others. However, an hour into the sit, she began to feel a sensation beneath the belly button that slowly crawled its way up the spine. Instead of placing judgment on it, she had been instructed to simply notice the sensation is a non-detachment sort of way. So there she sat, simply noticing this strange energetic sensation crawl up her spine. Up behind the stomach. Beneath the chest and heart. Toward the throat. Then, without warning, as the energy crawled on, her neck shot violently to the side as this feeling of energy seemed to erupt out of her and upward toward the sky above.
She then began to see light:
“It was this was a very, very, very white, like, almost could burn your eyes kind of white. And then everything went completely white. And I lost all sensation of physical body and sound and time. And like everything just dissolved into complete nothingness.”
This experience continued as Bria sat on her cushion quietly, an intense kundalini awakening happening unbeknownst by others sitting silently in their own meditative focus. When she came back to present awareness, thirty minutes had gone by and the reality looked and felt much, much different than before:
“When I came through it, my eyes were closed, and I was still sitting upright. I opened my eyes and it was very jarring in a way like I've never seen things before. I almost felt like I was a newborn.”
Eventually, the morning practice came to an end and Bria left to go walk outside. There, the world appeared vibrant:
“Even stepping in the grass and feeling the air hit my skin and the sunlight…turned into a really, really deep state of bliss, greater than I'd ever experienced before and a love like I'd never felt before.”
Tears flowed down her eyes as she felt this intense interconnectedness to all things.
Tears flowed down her eyes as she felt this intense interconnectedness to all things. She had tapped into what others have called the non-dual nature of reality, the sensational experience that our bodies are made of matter that quite literally connects to the cyclical ecosystem in nature. Perhaps then too, it appears, Bria felt a subtle energetic connection to this very nature of balance.
Eventually, however, the expansion that Bria experienced was soon counter-balanced with a contraction. As the evening meditation practice begun, Bria sat for what would seem to many as a terrifying experience. She chose to meditate in her sleeping quarters so that she could be surrounded by a mosquito net should any bugs come wandering by. She sat down, tuned into her breath, and then began to release into the art of noticing. Her body tightened up. Her breath grew rigid. And as the hallmarks of anxiety crept slowly into her brain, her nervous system felt under attack.
The spiders and cockroaches that normally crawled on the mosquito net at this time of the day grew larger and larger. it seemed to Bria that these bugs would surely begin to eat her. When she started hyperventilating, she lost all sensation of present-state awareness. And rational thought flew out of the window. That’s when she began to claw her way out:
“And I remember, I can actually recall this really vividly. I turned around on my bed and started clawing at it really rapidly. And while the hyperventilation was still happening, I felt like I was going to die. I was really scared that this was the end. I was about to die.”
During this time of chaos, Bria was not alone. Others sat around while engaging in their own meditation practice. The rules of the retreat were simple: respect the experience of the individual and do not speak or engage with others. So, even while Bria thrashed at her pillow like a caged animal, no one intervened, no one came to the rescue. It was just Bria and her mind, alone for the ride on a meditation pad.
After what seemed like a half-an-hour, Bria once again gained control of her breathing. She began to talk to herself, sending words of love and encouragement, and eventually curled up into a fetal position as she hugged her pillow. And as her breathing steadied, she drifted off to sleep.
The next day, she spoke to the teacher in private about her experience. He simply nodded and said, “Okay”. Okay....That’s it. Yet, this alone provided the affirmation that nothing Bria had felt was enough to ring the alarm bell.
The rest of the retreat carried on and while Bria did feel a hint of these two emotional extremes again, the swings slowly dwindled into a new sense of balance. Soon after, the retreat ended and Bria hopped onto the back of a motorbike. With her hair whipping in the wind, the air danced on her skin and the trees felt alive. Something profound had just occurred and she was ready to continue the journey.
A few months later she sat in her bed in New York, feeling a reverse sense of culture shock. She told no-one about her experience and felt out of touch with those around her. Like others have mentioned, she felt not of this world, but still in this world. She struggled to bring her newfound wisdom into her life at home: “For a couple of years after that, I worked really, really hard to kind of silence a lot of that stuff that was arising.”
It would take her two years to integrate her new sense of being into the world. She rekindled old friendships that felt empowering and then went on a trip. She hopped in a car and drove around the United States, living out of her bags without a home base. This travel brought with it a heightened pulse. Not long after, she would ground again, this time in a new home in Encinitas, California, the same place that the Indian mystic, Yogananda, called home in the 1920s.
She keeps up a steady meditation practice, has found an empowering community, and continues to integrate her new way of being. She sets clearer energetic boundaries and has found a heightened sense of ease when communicating what would have been in the past difficult conversations: "Even as challenging as it was, I felt within myself this stronger resilience and grounding to be in this experience.”Several years after light erupted from her neck while sitting on a mat in Bali, Bria had grounded in the outskirts of San Diego.
What Bria experienced has a variety of names and is looked at differently depending on the cultural perspective one looks through. In one culture, her experience would be associated with psychosis: a break away from reality in which a person needs treatment and is ill or “sick”. In another culture, this experience would be called a kundalini awakening: a sudden onset of dormant subtle energy that connects one to spirit and erupts throughout the body greatly altering one’s state of being. Christina and Stan Grof call this experience a “Spiritual Emergency”: a phrase they coined after researching evolving states of consciousness that are as unsettling as they are beautifully enriching.
This is personal development’s dirty little secret. It’s not talked about in a Tony Robbins’ seminar or one of Wayne Dyer’s empowering lectures. Pema Chodron touches on it through the Buddhist lens in what is called impermanence or walking through shaky ground. But much of the personal development world doesn’t talk about this. Why? Because it doesn’t sell well. And it’s unique to each person.
A Spiritual Emergency is when the line between intense personal development and psychosis becomes blurred. It’s literally difficult to tell whether you are going crazy or evolving into a whole new state of being. I’ll write more about my experience at another time, but know for now that it started with waking up at 2:30 in the morning and Googling “Am I Going Crazy!?”.
Much of the personal development world focuses on the good that comes from a spiritual practice. And that’s great. There is a lot to gain from having a consistent practice that helps you walk confidently through personal development. But sometimes growth isn’t smooth and it can literally feel like you’re being ripped apart. Such is the case with Bria and many others who have awakened into a beautifully terrifying new state of being.
If you feel like you’re in the midst of a spiritual emergence, breathe and hold the F on. It’s a wild ride for many, including myself, that can lead to profound breakthroughs in personal development. Do know, however, that you are not alone and there are others out there who can help you.
If this sounds like something you’re growing through, consider the following:
Lessen your responsibilities, if possible, or take time off to be with yourself. This may require asking your community to help you out.
Surround yourself with a spiritual community that empowers your growth, holding space for what you need to turn to and grow through this experience. Before Christina Grof passed on, she developed The Spiritual Emergence Network. It has a lot of resources on this subject.
Work with a trained guide who can hold space for you through this growth while also helping you continue a practice that feels grounding. The goal here is to integrate the lessons from this experience into your daily life in terms of being and doing.
At last, know that you are not going crazy. Your spirit is just screaming hello.
With love,
Mark