Part 21: Kundalini Awakening - How Long Does It Take?
People often ask me, how long does the Kundalini awakening process take?
The answer to the question varies from person to person. There are many things to consider when looking forward on our journey, as well as when we look back at things that happened early on in our journey, during our childhood, and also in previous incarnations, if we ascribe to that idea.
Now these are just my ideas, based on my experience, intuition, research, and encounters with others. Some teachers may disagree or have different views. I’m not the final word on the topic of Kundalini at all. I’m just here to share my perspective to get the discussion going a bit more.
So, once the Kundalini begins to awaken and rise, I would say that this process can take 1-10 years to reach relative completion and stability, which I have spoken about in other parts of this series.
1 year is very quick, often unheard of. 5 years is about average. 10 years is quite a while, but not unheard of.
But remember, fast or slow, it doesn’t really matter. It’s not a race.
Those that take about a 1-3 years have usually a combination of a few factors going for them.
Firstly, they are likely to have put in a lot of work toward healing, shadow work, emotionally development, trauma healing, meditation practice, and so on, prior to their Kundalini awakening.
They are likely to also have not come from extremely traumatic backgrounds to begin with, so there’s not a lot to be purified compared to those who have a lot of trauma.
As well, they usually have a great attitude toward the process - they are able to understand and implement the concepts of surrender, of unconditional self-love, of humility. They don’t run from this process in fear. They move into it directly, with faith. They seek out teachers and are good students.
On the other end of the spectrum, we have those that may take up to a decade or more to reach relative completion and stability.
These travelers usually begin their deep healing work after the Kundalini awakens. They don’t typically begin doing much work prior. As well, they may have significantly more trauma to process, which of course, will take time.
These kinds of people sometimes stumble into Kundalini awakening out of nowhere, without much of a spiritual background, so when it happens to them, they don’t always know what they’re experiencing, and this can cause them to crawl around in the dark for a while, sometimes many years.
They may have an experience and not have a clue what it was, not have anyone to talk to, not know how to describe it to even search on the internet, and so they’re essentially alone.
Eventually, they may start to put the puzzle pieces together and figure out what they’re experiencing and then begin to learn how to navigate the journey much more easily. But until then, it can take a while.
Sometimes, those who take longer on the journey can also end up delaying their own process through self-sabotage. They may not feel worthy of this transformation, and so they seek ways to shut it down, sometimes by denial, drug use, alcohol abuse, and other habits that can hinder the process.
Conversely, the other thing that can cause this process to be delayed is if an aspirant pushes too hard, is too controlling and manipulative of the process.
What I mean by this is, if an aspirant engages in too many effortful practices of energy manipulation, pranayama, and so on.
Sometimes people want to force the energy to awaken their third eye or crown for example. So they engage in drawing the energy upward to the third eye, or using aggressive pranayama practices.
If the system is not ready for this, it can create a lot of turbulence, and delay the process further.
It’s best to surrender and let the intelligence of the Kundalini do what it needs to do at its own pace, which is going to be much faster without your effort and aggression.
One key thing to remember, is to think of this process in terms of years, not weeks or months. Don’t expect drastic changes to happen in just a few months. Instead, consider how things might look in the next 2, 5, 10, 20 years.
This is a more realistic outlook for your spiritual development and evolution. It will keep you grounded and stable, instead of hoping to experience major shifts every little while.
Another thing to consider is that it’s very likely that you have been working toward this process since you were very young. I know I have been.
My Kundalini rising, the specific event in which it awakened fully, happened at age 23. But leading up to that, I was consciously engaging in spiritual practices since 15.
I first experienced major Kundalini phenomena at age 21 or 22, but looking back, I remember that the very first time I experienced kriyas was at just 15.
I sat to meditate for the first time, and my entire spine began to bend backwards in a forceful way. I didn’t know what was happening, and so I just stopped meditating all together and the weird phenomena stopped, for the most part.
But even prior to my teenage years, I was having energetic and meditative experiences as a child. Nothing extremely mystical, but things were going on for sure.
So, in a way, I’ve been on this journey for my whole life, almost 30 years now.
I invite you to look at your own journey in this way. See if you can reflect on some of the earliest experiences and memories you have, the way you felt, things that you may have thought about yourself and the world. You’ll likely find that you’ve been on this journey longer than you realized. This will help put things into perspective and help you to orient yourself a bit more.
Age doesn’t matter very much on this journey. What matters is consciousness and attitude. Sometimes we think of the idea of a wise old man or woman. But really, wisdom is timeless and we have all lived many lifetimes.
So I hope this has been useful for you. I know that I’ve left things a bit open ended. Let this be an invitation to really zoom out and look at your journey from a very high vantage point. There’s no rush, but at the same time, don’t delay your process unnecessarily with self-sabotage.
Contact me with any questions about your Kundalini awakening process.
Find out more about meeting with me one-on-one here.