Recently someone mentioned to me 'Kundalini Yoga'. Of course being the inquisitive or even nosy (LOL) writer I am, off I went to investigate. What I found was many forms of Kundalini. However, the descriptions and explanations I found were short and not really informative. So what a better way to find out than through an expert. Fortunately I didn't have to look far.
Meet JJ Semple. JJ is the Author of several written works, a teacher, student, and so much more. Thank you JJ for giving me sharing with us.
Steph: First, I’d like to thank you for this interview and congratulate you on the work you’re doing. The Internet is a pillar of popular communications, now and for the future. Thank you for finding a creative way of using it.
JJ are you a Healer, Therapist, Coach, Consultant?
All of the above. I don’t see a difference. They’re just different ways of communicating and energizing, some one-on-one, some with groups. The most sincere of these attempts to instill a sense of self-reliance in the individual and/or to introduce him/her to various practical processes for self-improvement.
Today, I am now primarily a writer, speaker, and teacher. That is, I try to communicate proven notions of self-reliance and self-improvement to the widest audience possible. For thirty years I dealt with individuals and small groups; now, having assimilated enough hands-on practice and knowledge thanks to my Kundalini experience, I am widening my message though books and through the Internet. From time to time, I still work with individuals and with small groups because I love it.
What message? The only way we can truly realize our human potential is by changing the negative aspects of our human nature, those aspects that keep holding us back. Kundalini, a dormant energy resource within each of us, is the most powerful means of accomplishing this. What’s more, it’s free of charge. It doesn’t cost anything to activate this energy and make it work for us on an individual and collective level.
JJ, please describe ‘The Kundalini’ and how it works?
Kundalini is misunderstood. I recently created a website dedicated to clearing up the confusion. I’m still adding content, may never finish. That’s the beauty of the Internet; you never run out of cyberspace.
Most people have some notion that Kundalini is the biological Life Force energy dormant in our bodies. It’s a couple of words thrown together. I copied this off my website. There are so many similar definitions. None of them are really satisfying. It’s not fully possible to define a phenomenon like Kundalini without experiencing it. It’s like trying to define death. You need to feel it happening in order to understand it.
At this stage in my life, however, the evolutionary aspects that Gopi Krishna focused on interest me most. Kundalini is a biological reality, a scientific fact. Nature included it in the body for a reason. If it didn’t serve a purpose, evolution (big E) would have eliminated it. That’s what Evolution does — eliminates the unnecessary. In this case, eliminating Kundalini would be tantamount to eliminating all future human evolution, all future improvements to the human species.
For Kundalini is responsible for every evolutionary change in our species. Moreover, it’s the key to our future evolution. It’s the future of our brain and our DNA. The neuroplastic changes produced in the brain through Kundalini are transmitted to future generations through DNA. That’s how we have evolved so far; that’s how we will continue to evolve. By the incremental changes in DNA that took place in the brains of exceptional people being passed along to future generations.
Kundalini is a scientific fact, not just some spiritual mumbo-jumbo. It’s part of a very successful early school of scientific research, one the ancients performed in the laboratory of their own bodies. And it produces measurable, quantifiable results, albeit in the metaphysical, instead of the physical, realm.
Most people don’t understand that Kundalini is “available” to them, don’t know how to activate it. They don’t know that Kundalini was once actually active in their beings, that it is responsible for their bodily substantiation, that they can re-activate it. Getting this series of facts across to a larger public, at the same time dispelling some of the popular myths about Kundalini, is a long-term task.
What is your experience in this field?
I activated Kundalini in 1972, almost 40 years ago. It was a full and permanent awakening, a rare phenomenon. Five years later, I visited Gopi Krishna in Kashmir to discuss my experience. At the time there were very few books on Kundalini. In fact, the experience was widely misunderstood — what caused it, what effects it induced, how to manage it, how to live with it.
Gopi Krishna is the father of modern Kundalini research and the only other person I’ve met whose Kundalini was active day and night from the time he activated it through meditation until the day he died. His book 'Kundalini: The Evolutionary Energy in Man' is a masterpiece. It’s a memoir and a how-to, a guidebook for activating and living with Kundalini. And it took him 30 years of living with Kundalini to be able to write it.
The same thing happened to me. Once Kundalini becomes active, so much happens, the individual’s brain changes so dramatically and so continually, it takes time to assimilate everything. Like Gopi Krishna, I needed years of living with Kundalini, years of adjusting to the changes it induced in my being in order to write about it.
Not that I was inactive during that period. I spent a lot of time working with groups and a lot of time cataloguing the various changes within my body and being. They are described in my books.
Gopi Krishna liked the fact that I had used 'The Secret of the Golden Flower' as a meditation method for awakening Kundalini. He told me that a safe, repeatable method for activating Kundalini was needed and charged me to continue making a reliable, repeatable version of Golden Flower Meditation accessible to all. I have spent the last 40 years doing this.
What is the Golden Flower?
The Golden Flower I know about comes from the book of the same name 'The Secret of the Golden Flower'(SGF). The term is also used in a dubious new-age context, something I know nothing about. The book is another matter. Complied in 8th Century by Chinese adepts, it is a manual on raising Kundalini. The terminology — the Chinese, Hindu, Taoist, Tibetan influences — may vary, but the secret techniques described in the book lead to the same end.
I used the book as a basis of my practice to activate Kundalini. After, because most Westerners find the wording in the SGF opaque, I modernized the method for today’s practitioner. My books contain valuable information on the secrets behind the Golden Flower.
How and when did your Journey lead you down this path?
Good question. I consider the journey as important as the destination. In fact, my book 'Deciphering the Golden Flower One Secret at a Time' is not only a memoir and a how-to, it’s also a detective story.
A childhood injury deformed me. If it wasn’t for the accident that caused my injury, I might never have discovered the amazing transformative power of Kundalini. The extraordinary factor in my case was that my injury occurred when I was very young, so young I actually suppressed all memory of it.
Years later, when I was thirty-four, a stranger handed me a book entitled 'The Secret of the Golden Flower'. It was a serendipitous moment, the beginning of my recovery process. I didn’t realize it at the time. In fact, I put the book away for over a year. Sometime later I picked it up and began practicing the method of meditation in the text. At first I thought I was wasting my time.
But the method was for real. Not only was it for real, this ancient method turned out to be the safest and most complete Kundalini method I’ve run across in my forty years of research. Anyway, upon awakening, the Kundalini recognized my deformity and immediately began to restore my body to its original state, the state of perfect symmetry that existed before my accident.
It took a lot of detective work to unravel the mystery. I spent a lot of time getting to the bottom of my condition and finding a means of correcting it.
On your site it says ‘Kundalini is the source of creative energy’. Can you give a short description of what that means?
First, let’s understand what’s meant by the term creative. Kundalini triggers creative effects in many areas. Would you call autonomic self-healing creative? I would. In the sense that it starts a process of removing limitations and enabling. The individual discovers new talents and capabilities never before explored or realized.
Would you call 'overcoming addictions' creative? I would. Kundalini brings about an entirely new “human being;” brain chemistry is altered. The mind matures. Creativity and self-discipline flourish. I had never written a book or directed a film. Gopi Krishna never spoke German (German came to him spontaneously). Friends of mine never wrote, acted, painted, or composed music. Not until they awakened Kundalini. Once it happens, creative powers start to appear spontaneously.
What’s more, Kundalini changes the whole decision making process, introducing elements of logic and clarity into an often too emotional process.
'The Secret of the Golden Flower' talks about the Conscious and the Primal Spirits. The Conscious Spirit is the state we’re born into, one governed by the five senses and by emotion. The Primal Spirit is the eternal, immutable power of nature. It doesn’t know the alphabet or multiplication tables; it is the creative force of nature. Once you re-awaken Kundalini — something every individual can do — the Primal Spirit replaces the Conscious Spirit. It’s our job, should we desire to realize our full potential, to reawaken the Primal Spirit, the source of all forms of creative energy.
Please talk to us a little about your books 'Deciphering the Golden Flower One Secret at a Time' and 'The Backward-Flowing Method: The Secret of Life and Death'
'Deciphering the Golden Flower One Secret at a Time' is a memoir, a how-to, and a detective story. How can a book be all three? Well, my first concern was to make the book readable. According to my reviewers, I have succeeded. It’s written in the first person and moves quickly. Readers tell me they can’t put it down. Nevertheless, I knew my biggest challenge with a book that moved quickly was to find a seamless way of integrating meaningful content. I decided that telling the story of my Kundalini awakening contained more than enough content. After all, it began at my birth. I realized I couldn’t leave anything out; I had to tell my life story warts and all, and do it in under 200 pages. The book is 186 pages.
In 'The Backward-Flowing Method: The Secret of Life and Death' I changed style and voice. Why? My first book read like a novel. In the second, I needed to step back from the process itself as an actor and take a critical look at it. Some readers couldn’t identify with this new approach; I’m not sure I could have done it any other way. You can’t please everyone. The two books go together; the second is a continuation of the first.
The backward-flowing method is the secret meditation technique. I consider it to be the secret of life. Why? It’s the third step in Golden Flower Meditation (GFM), the most reliable, safest means of awakening Kundalini. Why do I also say it’s the secret of death? Because GFM links up with 'The Tibetan Book of the Dead'. Mastering Golden Flower Meditation and its key backward-flowing sublimation technique prepares the individual to overcome the obstacles to accepting death (as described in 'The Tibetan Book of the Dead', in order to facilitate the whole death-rebirth cycle. The Circulation of the Light talked about in 'The Secret of the Golden Flower' is the same light encountered by those who have undergone near death experiences (NDE). If one can experience this light, know and understand its eternal purpose while still living, how much better will he/she be prepared for the actual moment of death and the challenges posed by navigating the afterlife?
What are the benefits of the Kundalini and Kundalini Meditation to ones personal health and healing?
GFM delivers pretty spectacular results. As in Ponce de Leon — Fountain of Youth-type results. On the back cover of 'The Backward-Flowing Method: The Secret of Life and Death', I list the effects gained from mastering Golden Flower Meditation: Triggers autonomic self-healing mechanisms capable of correcting defects due to neural degeneration
Rejuvenates the brain and the body as a result of intense activity; Retards the aging process; Reverses self-destructive and addictive behavior; Heightens and enhances consciousness through the awakening of various metanormal effects and powers; Refines the being to the point where the individual is able to effect a release from Karmic bondage; Clearly demonstrates that the ego spirit persists after death; Facilitates the transition into the next state of being.
What is Diaphragmatic Deep Breathing? How important is this Breathing method?
It all starts with breathing.Breathing is the most important exercise you’ll ever do. Unfortunately, most people don’t breathe correctly. 'Diaphragmatic Deep Breathing represents the crucial first step of the Golden Flower. Kundalini Meditation method, a step each practitioner must learn before attempting the backward-flowing method.
You also do a Podcast. What is it about and Where can the readers find it?
The Golden Flower Podcast covers a variety of Kundalini and Golden Flower Meditation issues, many of the same issues covered in my books and on my website. However, the spoken word format has a decidedly different impact. Listeners tell me they like the Podcast because the setting creates an intimate effect.
You can subscribe to my Podcast through iTunes or through Podcast Alley.
My next multimedia project is a foray into ITV — Internet TV. I’m planning a high-quality (HD) ITV interview & commentary show. We’ll discuss the scientific aspects of human potential as well as its metaphysical aspects.
I created a spoken word CD for Diaphragmatic Deep Breathing'. The exercises in this CD are set to Universal World genre music I composed and arranged. Golden Flower Meditation uses the nervous and respiratory systems to trigger a host of metabolic and somatic activity in the human body, especially in the internal organs. Through Golden Flower Meditation, the nervous system is stimulated such that the natural chemical substances of the body are recombined and used for self-healing, rejuvenative purposes, and greater overall awareness. But it all starts with breathing ...
Thank you so much JJ for educating us on The Kundalini. Wishing you many more years of Color, Peace and Kundalini!
To find out more about JJ, his books and his teachings visit his FaceBook page at JJ on FaceBook or visit these sites:
http://www.commonsensekundalini.com
http://www.goldenflowermeditation.com
http://www.lifeforcebooks.com
4 comments:
Wonderful! I will click around on the links ---another wonderful interview and interesting interviewee, Steph! THank you both!
Thank you! :-)) Very interesting stuff going on round here! I love my job!
Great stuff here. Please thank the spotlighted author for us.
Thank you! I will most certainly let him know! :-)
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