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c h aP t e r 22

I

hitched north into Colorado and made my way back to Telluride.
I spent another three days there, sleeping again in the woods just
outside of town, savoring the peace and quiet of nature now that
the festival was no longer going on. The first night, arriving late and
feeling intolerably road-weary, I crawled into my tent, collapsed in-
side my sleeping bag, and slept deeply for more than twelve hours. It
felt as if I were unconscious for days.
I awoke feeling unusually refreshed and revitalized, experiencing
a powerful stream of invigorating energy flowing throughout me.
A much-needed night of deep sleep had worked wonders for both
my physical and spiritual being. I just lay there through the morn-
ing, taking it all in, feeling the cells of my body being nourished by
this powerful energy flowing through my soul, for a change, rather
than ramming into it. My basic daily difficulty wasn’t that I didn’t
have energy—it was that I was too often carrying around energy that
wasn’t in motion. Rather than putting this force to use, I was instead
being dragged down by it, because I had such a hard time aligning
with it.
The distinction between feeling this energy moving rather than its
being a dead weight was truly a world of difference. Though it was
still intense, as usual, it was an entirely different experience when
I managed to actually find balance with this source of energy. I felt
more in command of it, rather than the other way around. It actually
felt good for a change, in that moment, to be channeling the pro-
found Kundalini fire. On those occasions when I was able to find the
eye of calm amidst the storm of my life, I was reminded why it was
worth facing all the pain of connecting with this dynamic energy: