As students, we have a responsibility to continually connect to the depth of refined energy that is transmitted through the teacher. This requires some discernment, because the energy that moves through a lineage is perpetually purifying and refining itself.

In any authentic practice the energy is like water running down a mountain, finding its own path. As it does so, it purifies its external connection, as well as the people that it is drawing to itself. This is a continuing source of nourishment for those who can connect and attune to the changing energy.

Unfortunately, as that shift takes place, everyone’s drama, resistance, and a myriad of reasons for not making that shift seem to arise and be perceived as valid. We must therefore be sure that our commitment to growth is expressed through disciplined action. It’s not enough to have the abstract desire of wanting to know God — we must cultivate the disciplined capacity within ourselves to not be caught in the resistance that will...

Making contact with the deepest dimensions of the central channel activates powerful energies within us that will purify our entire psychic system. Due to that enlivenment, we may have to be patient and allow the rippling effects of that process to change us.

To understand why working deeply may cause some volatility in our lives, we first must explore the nature of the suṣumṇa, the central channel. The suṣumṇa is the core of who we are. Śakti, the dynamic power of God, expresses our life through the descent of kuṇḍalinī into this channel; it creates, sustains and nourishes every aspect of us.

Accompanying this individuation is a forgetting of who we really are. We experience separation from God and become consumed by our mind and emotions. We get caught in trying to control life by changing the conditions we face, which only reinforces the perception of duality.

The purpose of sādhana is to remember that we are not separate from divine Consciousness. The awakening and liberation...

The rising and expansion of awareness happens in three ways:

~ Actuating the ascent of our individuated awareness through the skypath of the central channel.

~ Soaring with ease on the updraft like the majestic hamsa bird.

~ Or, in absolute surrender, being inhaled upward into that infinite space by God’s in-breath.

In most spiritual traditions it is understood that breath is the means of contacting the highest Consciousness within. Consciousness is the place from which breath arises, and the pulsation of Consciousness gives life not only to our breath but to all manifestation. This is spanda, the subtle pulsation of the breath of God, the imperceptible movement of Consciousness into form. My teacher Rudi described the experience of being in a deep state of surrender as “being breathed.”

There are three ways we can use our breath to penetrate within and discover the pulsation of Consciousness:

1. Moving into the Skypath of the Central Channel

The central channel, the suṣumṇ...

Pray for the fierce love of a guru, a fire breathing, eyes blazing, śakti throwing one.

This is the most succinct way I can describe my guru, Swami Rudrananda. He was always breathing fire and his eyes were ablaze with śakti, which he was continually throwing, even without moving. His energetic fierceness expressed his relentless transmission of the power to liberate that flowed through him. It was relentless, and it was intentional.

It was impossible for Rudi to be any other way because there was nothing left of him: he was just an open channel, an agent of the śakti that moved through him. There was a wide range of dynamics with Rudi – his personality, his incessant requirement of discipline, his absolute, unconditional love for us – that was all delivered through this extraordinarily intense, embodied person. By being Rudi’s student, I learned that the very point of having a relationship with a guru is to receive the liberating power that is flowing through them, and to be freed b...