Sandra Ehlers is a Self-Integration & Kundalini Awakening Guide, Trauma Informed Yoga Meditation Teacher, Event Facilitator, Reiki Master, and Writer. Her work is dedicated to inner union – not only through expanded awareness, but as a lived, embodied experience of wholeness in the world.
The nature of ecstasy and bliss, ida and pingala energy currents, and their sacred union. Picture this: You sit down for meditation, re-centering into awareness itself. As you allow your sense of self to dissolve, like a fresh water spring bubbling up from a secret source underneath the ground, an inner joyfulness arises at your heart.
You allow this joyfulness to flow freely and fill your awareness. It grows and begins to bubble, glow, bloom, sparkle or explode out from the heart into all parts and aspects of your body, mind and soul.
Your body fills with ecstasy, your emotions with sweetness, your mind with peace, and your being with blissfulness. You feel limitless.
As you rise from meditation, you relish in finding that you naturally bring this inner sweetness with you into your day.
In fact, there is nowhere you can go where it can’t follow. Both the bliss, and the ecstatic aliveness of Kundalini, are qualities of your essence. Existing beyond, but expressed vibrantly through your incredible body.
As we embark on the tantric path of Kundalini awakening, we eventually come across these two polarities of spiritual union: ecstasy and bliss. These two are not the same, and understanding the difference will help you explore each.
Yogic bliss
True bliss is limitless. It is a direct experience of our own limitlessness, which is why it cannot be fully wrapped in words.
When experienced in the body, bliss can take on any and all flavors of euphoric experience: sweetness, childlike joy and playfulness, elation, freedom, equanimity, reverent love or passionate radiance.
It may flow fluidly between flavors to keep us mesmerized, even as we simply watch it unfold, unattached in a state of pure innocence.
Bliss is a subtle experience. We usually encounter it first in meditation. It is as if we’re blessed by a taste of our true potential – this often becomes a carrot motivating us to continue to integrate meditation on our essence into the moments of life.
Since bliss is the direct experience of the nature of awareness, it exists independently of the body and all that we perceive in the world. It is and eternal radiance, showering us with joyfulness from within.
Our work is to anchor this experience into our embodiment. We do it in meditation, by seeing through all the false concepts and ideas of who we are and establishing ourselves in inner silence. And we do it in the moments of life, by learning inner boundaries to re-center into that awareness.
This is the "masculine polarity" in tantra: learning to abide in pure awareness, aware of our limitless eternal nature.
Ecstasy
At the opposite end, the "feminine polarity" bids us to embrace all of our lived experience. Every limitation we perceive, every pain and all the raw reality it creates in our body-mind.
Instead of "removing limitations," it is a wrapping ourselves around them with love. Learning to revel in the intensity of physical embodiment, and lovingly hold the chaos of creation: the continual death and rebirth of the cosmos within and without.
The more deeply we can integrate this polarity, the freer our physical experience can become.
Not holding on to resistance around the bodily experience, we are free to explore it in delight: the natural inclination towards pleasurable sensations ranging from sweetness to overwhelming unapologetic ecstasy.
Ecstasy is the free, uninhibited moving of awakened Kundalini. That essence, that passion which continually drives us towards reuniting with the source of love within. When Kundalini rises and fully touches our being, we experience that ecstatic aliveness.
The key difference between bliss and ecstasy is their origin.
While bliss is sourced from resting in pure awareness, ecstasy is a natural arising in the body when it feels safe to surrender.
The masculine and feminine paths
Kundalini desires nothing more than for these two seeming polarities to merge into one. Instead of choosing one polarity or the other; the masculine or the feminine; why not choose both?
The rising of pingala, or awakening of the masculine current, requires us to surrender our grasping; the clinging to stories of the past, and the need to control what isn't ours to control, in order to experience the freedom beyond limitations.
The rising of ida, or awakening of the feminine current, asks us to embrace it all completely, exactly as it is, pouring loving presence into every ounce of attachment. Finding freedom right within all the juicy, alive chaos of the cosmos.
There is no contradiction between the two. It is not one or the other – they are eternally interwoven.
Learning to embrace all polarity, not just as an idea but all the way into our cells, creates the space within to let it go.
In other words, letting go is not bypassing: It is to be with our limitations, pain and joy so fully, so unapologetically, that we can genuinely feel the truth of our own acceptance.
When there is no more fear to meet any parts of ourselves, we come to recognize how it is a simple, effortless decision to choose joy.
Desire of joy is the most innocent, natural movement within life. When no longer approached from an energy of avoidance, it is an active, aware choosing of life.
This pure state of innocence, prior to and not attracted to suffering, is the most natural state for us all. Thus, it is available for us to experience – if we choose to trust this possibility within ourselves.
Ready to dive into your own ecstatic essence? Check out retreats, workshops, or the Infinite Love Kundalini Activation Package, all designed to prepare you for an experience of love beyond boundaries.
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Sandra Ehlers, Self-integration and Awakening Guide
Sandra Ehlers is a Self-Integration & Kundalini Awakening Guide, Trauma Informed Yoga Meditation Teacher, Event Facilitator, Reiki Master, and Writer. Her work is dedicated to inner union – not only through expanded awareness, but as a lived, embodied experience of wholeness in the world. The focus is on transforming and integrating all levels of conscousness; physical, emotional, mental, energetic and spiritual – creating a foundation for deepened present-moment awareness, equanimity, aliveness, and ultimately, bliss. Alongside workshops, classes and retreats, Sandra offers 1:1 support to self-alignment through the Completion Process and other modalities.
