11 ... Gabriel Morriscenter were of great help. Having a routine, a simple rhythm to my
life that kept me on task but wasn’t overly demanding, seemed to be
just what I needed.
I had arrived at Ananda feeling extremely scattered, cloudy, and
energetically blocked. The long summer of traveling, although fun,
exciting, and adventurous, had also been a whirlwind of activity
in which I had for the most part ended up neglecting my spiritual
development. And the demands of working forty hours a week in
Alaska, especially given the early morning hours, had been draining
both physically and mentally, and had also thrown off my sleep pat-
terns. The last few weeks of work I had been dragging myself out of
bed every morning, forcing myself through each day, and then lying
down to restless nights. But at least I had some money saved up to
show for it.
Over time at Ananda, I slowly became a little more clear and bal-
anced, as I was able to attend to and direct my discordant energy
patterns. But I still found myself regularly in bizarre, overwhelming
mental and emotional states; and was often downright terrified by
the intensity of energy flowing through me. I often doubted whether
I could handle this experience indefinitely, as it clearly didn’t seem
that the flow of energy I’d tapped into was going to simply shut off
at some point. A year had passed since my initial experience, and
yet the Kundalini energy was still commanding my life. It seemed
that I was permanently linked to this spiritual reservoir of sorts, and
all I could do was get accustomed to it—no matter how I wished at
times that I hadn’t stumbled upon this challenging and disconcerting
phenomenon. But I couldn’t look too far down the road. I just had to
deal with the present day and take it from there.
Though I was undoubtedly much better now than in the few
months following my awakening, the energy’s intensity had not, in
actuality, diminished at all over the past year. It was as if I had be-
come permanently saddled with a heavy weight. And yet, although
that weight was still there on my back, both figuratively and liter-
ally, I was to some extent getting used to its presence in my life. The