With Don Lee Daniels

(Swami Jñānānanda)

Kuṇḍalinī Śakti awakening. Advanced meditation. Conscious out-of-body exploration (OBE) — drawing from the ancient tandra state practices of Nondual Śaiva Tantra, the dream yoga tradition of Vajrayāna Tibetan Buddhism, and the experiential work of modern OBE pioneers.

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Not long after the awakening I described last week when I was nineteen — the golden-white energy, the explosion through the crown, the hovering above my parents’ house as light, the expansion of consciousness — I sat down to meditate again. I had been reading about what the yogic tradition calls kriyās — spontaneous movements of energy through the body. Yogis described their body moving, breathing patterns changing, hands and arms rising without conscious effort, sometimes even full-blown yoga postures.

I was curious.

But instead of trying to imitate what I had read, I did something that would become the foundation of my entire practice. I simply asked.

Mother Kuṇḍalinī, show me.

A word about that name, because it matters. In the Nondual Śaiva Tantra tradition — the tradition I practice and teach from — this living force of consciousness is called Kuṇḍalinī Śakti, and she is understood as feminine: the dynamic, creative power of awareness itself. I call her “she.” I address her as Mother. That is how she feels to me, and it is how I have related to her for more than forty years.

I invite you to try these words. Not because they are the only words — every genuine contemplative lineage in human history has recognized this force under a different name. In Christianity, she is the Holy Spirit. In Taoism, Chi. In Tibetan Buddhism, the clear light of awareness. In modern consciousness science, some call her Source. But the words I use carry the living energy — the Chaitanya — of my lineage. They are not just descriptions. They are transmissions. When I write “Mother Kuṇḍalinī,” the energy of that relationship is in the words themselves. Try them on. Let them move through you. You may be surprised by what you feel. And if you also carry your own language, your own tradition, your own way of relating to this force — bring that too. You are welcome here exactly as you are.

And then I waited.

My arms began to move. Slowly. Not because I was directing them — I wasn’t. Energy ran through them like a warm current, up through the shoulders and down through the fingers, and my arms stretched and opened in movements I had never learned. Then my upper torso began to turn, gently, side to side, as if something were unwinding me from the inside. And then the breathing changed. A slow, rhythmic prāṇāyāma arose on its own — not something I was doing, but something that was being done through me.

I wasn’t doing any of it.

That got my attention.

And then the movement stopped. Everything became very still. And I dropped into one of the deepest meditations I had ever experienced — a silence so complete that there was nothing left but awareness itself.

When I came back, I understood something I have never forgotten:

All you have to do is ask. Be aware. Feel. And she responds.

That was more than forty years ago. And in the decades since, through thousands of hours of practice, through study and initiation and teaching, I have come to understand something even deeper about what happened that evening.

At first, it felt as though something was happening to me. The Śakti was moving me. She was the force, and I was the one being moved. Beautiful. Powerful. But still — two.

Over time, that changed. I began to realize she was not flowing through me the way water flows through a pipe. She is me. It is my energy. My awareness. My own deepest nature expressing itself through my body, my breath, my mind.

And at some point, I stopped managing the experience and simply gave myself to it. I surrendered. And the recognition arrived: we are one and the same. There was never a separation. There was only the moment I hadn’t noticed yet.

Of course, the mind still does its thing. I get caught in a thought, a worry, a reaction — and the recognition momentarily fades. But as soon as I pause and tune in, she is there. She moves through me and reminds me who I am, and awareness snaps back, and my mind returns to pure consciousness.

This is the freedom I am pointing toward in this entire teaching. You always have the ability to return to pure consciousness. Always. It is never more than one pause away.

You do not have to wait for a dramatic awakening to begin feeling her move. She is already moving in you. Right now. She is your consciousness. Without her, you would not be aware of these words on this screen.

Your body and mind have been registering her movement your entire life — in the tingling at the base of the spine during deep prayer, in the goosebumps that rise when music opens something inside you, in the warmth that floods the chest when love arrives without warning, when you see a beautiful sunrise or sunset. These are not random sensations. They are the felt texture of consciousness moving through you. In the Nondual Śaiva Tantra tradition, this movement is called spanda — the divine vibratory pulse, I call it the divine heartbeat, that underlies all experience.

The ancient yogic texts knew this. In the Yogadarshana Upanishad, the Kuṇḍalinī is described in words that still stop me every time I read them: “In the center of the body there burns a great fire, bright as molten gold.”

That fire is not a metaphor. It is what I often see when I close my eyes and turn inward. A living, luminous presence, burning at the center of everything I am.

And the first time you feel consciousness as something alive in your body — not as a thought, not as a concept, but as a living current the mind did not produce and cannot explain — a crack appears in the reality you inherited. Everything you were taught about who you are — by family, by religion, by culture, by education, by authority figures of every sector of society — every voice that told you that you are only a body, only a mind, only this limited, separate self — begins to lose its hold. Finally! That crack is the beginning of true freedom. And tonight, I want you to feel it.

Sit comfortably. Close your eyes. Take a few settling breaths.

Now hold your palms about six inches apart. Don’t touch anything. Don’t imagine anything. Just feel. Notice whatever is there — warmth, tingling, a subtle aliveness, a faint magnetic pull.

Slowly move your hands toward each other, then apart. Back and forth. Gently. Stay with the feeling.

Something is there. You may not be able to name it. That’s fine. You are not naming it. You are meeting it.

Now bring the breath into it. Inhale slowly for a count of four. Hold gently at the top — a soft kumbhaka — for a count of four. Exhale for six. And in the pause after the exhale, rest. Let the next breath come on its own.

Feel how the breath changes the sensation in the palms. In the arms. In the spine. The breath is her vehicle. When you coordinate conscious breath with felt awareness, the energy amplifies.

And when you feel that amplification — even faintly — drop a single recognition into the silence:

📧 Listening at the Edge of Consciousness Newsletter — deep teachings, both modern and ancient — Kuṇḍalinī Śakti awakening. Advanced meditation. Conscious out-of-body exploration (OBE) — drawing from the ancient tandra state practices of Nondual Śaiva Tantra, the dream yoga tradition of Vajrayāna Tibetan Buddhism, and the experiential work of modern OBE pioneers.

But the upāyas, the different and progressively more subtle ways of spiritual practice, are alive. They move. They overlap. You may begin with the structured practice and find that at some point during the sitting, the technique falls away on its own. The energy moves without your direction. The breath breathes you. Something deeper has taken over. That is śāktopāya — the Way of Insight — arriving uninvited.

When it does, don’t fight it. Don’t try to get back to the technique. That is the Śakti teaching you directly.

And this is only the beginning. The tantric tradition mapped extraordinary gradations of how Śakti — Kuṇḍalinī — awakens — gradations we will explore as this series unfolds. For now, the important thing is much simpler: learn to notice how she is already moving in you.

Do the practice tonight. And then watch what happens tomorrow — when you’re not meditating. When you’re walking, working, lying down to sleep. Watch for her. She doesn’t stop when you open your eyes. She follows you into the day, into the night, into the dream.

Next week, I will tell you what begins to change when she does.

As it says in the Śiva Sūtras, verse 1.12: vismayo yogabhūmikāḥ — the stages of yoga are astonishing.

———

 This is the second issue in the series Direct Experience Reshapes Your Reality — a complete walk-through of my teaching that will eventually become a free course. If someone you know is searching for something real, share this with them.

 Dive inward, fly free.

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Take care,

Don Lee Daniels

Swami Jñānānanda