Reflections and Transitions: A big announcement and invitation for you!

In what follows I offer an intimate personal share, an announcement, and an invitation. May you find benefit in reading it all the way through. And I thank you.

If you prefer to listen to this the Audio is loaded in the player above.

On the whole my thirties have been a wild dharmic ride. Something like a decade-long portal during which I’ve been reshaped and remade a thousand times over. To say that my thirties have been “transformational" is the most basic, vanilla, safe option possible.

Next month I turn 39 and embark on my 40th year. At some point it stopped making sense to me to mark time in that Western way of what has passed (39 years), and to join with what is present (the 40th). I’ve known-felt for the past several years that the transition to my forties will be equally, but differently significant.

At this point, in September 2023, I’ve had at least a solid year of integrating the radical, alchemical, (physical, biological, developmental) process of a full and complete Kundalini rising. The rising spontaneously (karmically) began in 2017, took off in 2019 and rose to completion in 2021. The Kundalini rising process brought waves and waves of awakening, constantly upleveling my baseline, stripping away identifications, and inviting me to surrender to my soul’s mission. 

At the peak of this ground-up, inside-out, never-ending-scavenger-hunt of an alchemical awakening, I spent hours and hours in process every single day, totally lucid and totally blown open, for months on end. At times, being a passenger in a car driving down a country road was too intense for me. 

I was simultaneously like an infant, reclaiming my original sensitivities, and the whole Universe.

Entire paradigms broke down. Romantic love was replaced with unconditional love. The construct of time became a bliss awakening. The causal level became my new center of feeling and the cosmic self became my new body. Even the texture of my hair changed.

A major dualism I had to resolve was good and evil. This was one of the most challenging and growth-inducing initiations of the whole rising and took about a full year and then some to complete. I look back at it now and, having recently received a direct download of the energetic of Chö, realize that the whole period was an initiation into that. While I wasn’t engaged in the formal, codified practice, I was absolutely living the core essence of it. Cutting, purging, clearing. No hope, no fear. No personal self, just energy moving.

They say the Kundalini rising culminates with a “Pinnacle Experience” which I had in November 2021 at a dharma brother’s house on a mountain top in Santa Fe, NM. While naked, slowly submerging my whole body into a cold plunge there was a total loss of separation. Complete oneness. No observer, no observation. Nothing. No-thing. No memory. Gone, Gone Beyond, Gone Way Way Beyond. Ah hah!

While this Kundalini rising has completed, by no means has my spiritual development. In some important ways my spiritual life has just begun and so has my path of service.

Much of 2022 and into early 2023 was spent clearing the last of the debris, mostly from the right side channels of my bodies, which mostly showed up as related to expressing the wounds of the collective dimension of the masculine, and finally the egregore of the patriarchy. Things get weird when you integrate the cosmic self. The Kundalini process brought the clearing of the personal, ancestral, and collective dimensions. And I spent the most time clearing ancestral and collective karma from my system.

 April 2023 was a turning point. The work of clearing the backlog of karma completed and the near constant tension up and down my right side, which began in 2020, was released. The final piece to clearing the right side channels involved healing the relationship between the Earth’s etheric body and the energetic structure of the patriarchy through and as my body. Working with the whole energy structure of the patriarchy and supporting it to come into recognition was totally wild. Once I was able to do my part in this collective healing, I no longer felt it as pain in my body. (I have notes and transcripts detailing almost everything I’ve experienced throughout these years.)

Since then, things have been different. Most notably, I no longer seem to have much or any “inner world”. The inner dimension which I spent so much time clearing, transmusting, and processing through the Kundalini rising, no longer seems to be a place I can “go” to. There isn’t really anything there, it is just instantly open and empty. Imagine an interior room in your home now instantly opens to the outside whenever you try to go into it. Along with this shift has been the gradual release of “the observer” or observing consciousness. This continues to loosen and diminish, and while I still can get triggered and experience anger, fear, and sadness, more and more I reside in radical presence - more like a single, undifferentiated field of experience. 

This is quite a different basis of operation than the Dara, who in 2018, had her job and her life and her spiritual practice. It was all so neat and tidy back then. By 2020 the whole scenario flipped and the spiritual path had me. Since then I’ve continuously given my life over to it and have prayed for it to take everything from me. Burn it down, burn it all down.

They say that the Kundalini rising, if progressed far enough, will reunite you with your soul’s spiritual tradition. Mine is undeniably Tibetan Buddhist/Vajrayana/Dzogchen, though in recent months I’ve been connecting with something even more ancient and original than what might be evoked by those terms. These traditions are timeless and I am grateful to have tasted their essence. 

Along with a meditative practice (and incredible meditation teachers), a background of nearly 20 years of mind-body awareness work and energy healing, I’ve also worked with supportive medicines throughout my process (mostly MDMA and psychedelic mushrooms). However, what I can’t stress enough is that the embodied intelligence of the awakening itself showed me the way and gave me the tools and practices. And this continues to be true for me.

Throughout this process I’ve been supported by a small, core group of loved ones, who have remained close to me and at times took care of me when I couldn’t care for myself. There have been others who showed up to listen and engage with me, and to cheer me on as I experienced the wild blessing and challenge of the Kundalini rising. My heartmind continues to be blown by the synchronicities of who shows up and when. My deepest gratitude to everyone who has been and continues to be a part of this process.

Today, my whole life is a series of unfoldings which I am allowing and following. Much of my experiences reveal the essence of reality or of a particular quality, directly – of which I’m aware there are whole practices built to connect, create, generate, or otherwise enable one to experience. In other words, a lot of doing or accumulation to get to something. My experience is nearly the inverse. I’m given or shown it directly, or my body spontaneously takes the shape, and then I understand how and why the practice around it got codified. Like getting struck by lightning it spontaneously arrives all at once.

What’s clear to me now as I write this is that it is time for me to intentionally go into retreat to open to and move through the next phase of this journey. My sense is that there is a body of work that is ready to be received, transmitted and translated, and later offered to others. The guidance I’m receiving is to take a year off to allow this to happen and that is what I’m currently aligning with.

As I often tell people who are at the place to receive it: Choicelessness is easeful.

I have taken vow after vow and pledged my life to the tradition I am in receipt of. There is no choice for me at this time than to get still and receive. This year-long retreat is a samaya. It is a commitment to bring through whatever teachings I can for the benefit of all beings.

There are some practical aspects I will follow-up about in the coming weeks and months. If you have questions or concerns please email me. Presently, my intention is to begin this retreat on 1/11/24 and my calendar will remain open until then. If you want to work with me before I’m away please schedule via my website or get in touch. 

I don’t know what the time away will bring. It is possible that I will receive visitors in person at my home in Connecticut or even offer remote healing ceremonies. I do know that I need to step back from 1:1 work and stop using a calendar for a while. I will have support and I will have people you can contact if you want or need to reach me and when I have something to share I will reach out.

Lastly, if you feel connected to or possibly even inspired by what I've shared here please consider making a donation (of any amount) to support my retreat. If the work we’ve done together over the past several years has been impactful, also, please consider supporting my retreat. I am not independently financially wealthy (nor is my partner nor family). As of a few months ago, I paid off all of my student loans, leaving me debt free. Anything you’re able to contribute will go towards my basic living expenses, to the household I will be supported by, and to keeping my website online so people can access the wealth of healing content in the Prism Collective while I’m away (more to come about Prism). Any amount you can offer is supportive.

• You can send a gift via Venmo to @darananda or PayPal to @darananda
• You can send a donation via my website (which I’ll pay fees and taxes on) using this link.
• If you'd like to send a check or make an offer in cash please get in touch with me via email ([email protected]) or by phone if you have my number.

All transactions are private. Use whichever method is easier for you. If you have any questions about this or are in a position to make a large donation requiring tax-deduction please contact me and we can see what’s possible.

If you’ve gotten this far, thank you for reading (or listening). Merely receiving this testimony is an act of service. I offer this and all that I am in receipt of for the benefit of all beings, in all dimensions, throughout spacetime.

Om Ah Hum

-Dara Ananda, September 2023, Connecticut, USA