Over the years, I’ve talked about the gut awakening. This is part of a sequence that Adyashanti described as head, heart, gut. I jokingly called these the 3 am-egos. We could say the 3 levels of identification. They’re also called mahamarmas and dantians. These 3 energy centres get most entangled with identity.
Head is the mental self-conception; our stories about who we are. The centre of this releases with the first awakening, Self Realization, when we shift from being a personal me to Self or no-self (depending on the style of our experience).
The process next descends to the heart when a higher octave of the heart opens up. Often, we break open a crust and it falls away. Universal values of love and compassion come online. This settles our emotional reactivity (Vasanas) and resolves the energy triggers that busy the mind. While much of the mental noise settles with the first shift, this goes deeper here.
The Gut holds our core or existential identity. It is the upper part of our “personal” chakras and holds our core resistance and self-protection. Much of this arena is unconscious for most people. We learn to stash what we don’t want here as well, such as trauma. I talked about a prior related conversation Susanne had with Adya here.
In this recent video, Susanne discusses this process and her own experience of it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxZomusarjU
(Apologies but the link wouldn’t embed. I suspect a recent update)
Like Adyashanti, I experienced head with the first awakening (Self Realization), heart with the opening into God Consciousness, and gut with Unity (Adya doesn’t use the same words). In the video, Susanne associates heart with Unity, and gut later, with her Brahman shift (although she doesn’t go into that here).
At first, I related these releases with the first 3 stages of enlightenment, as that’s how they presented here. But since then, I’ve seen how they’re not tied to the stages but relate to stages of energetic embodiment. I’ve seen people have the gut release well into Brahman or not even have it yet post-Brahman. But they happen sequentially, so if the heart hasn’t happened yet, the gut won’t have either.
In my case, the gut release was brief, followed by the Unity shift. I’ve been less somatic that Susanne, as we discussed in our conversation. I was still more up and out then, living in consciousness. The identification with the core identity had broken, but didn’t clear the gut area as much. As things have descended more deeply since, the hidden somatic contractions have surfaced more. That led me into an exploration of somatic therapy and my specific energetic nature.
As you can see, there is lots of variety in the process, but these are common signposts of energetic progress. I quite enjoyed Susanne’s sharing.
Davidya
Apologies for the lag in posts. It’s been a curious and busy time.
But there are multiple articles drafted. You should see a flow again now. 🙂
Hi David, another beautiful and important post, thank you. And you have written a lot about this earlier also, this fills out and sums up what you have written before seen from here. Great illustration. Is the sequential unfolding a given, or is there room for variation also there? Looking forward to the coming posts, such an extraordinary and important adventure this blog, in so many ways.
Yes, they’re an important topic, as many teachers don’t talk about more than the first. Yet without getting into the weeds, we will not reap the rewards of an embodied awakening.
Thanks for sharing David. I always found the 3 centers to be more of energetic stages rather than awakening stages. For me, the challenge has always been to bring the awakening deep into the body.
Yes, Stephen. It can certainly be a challenge to bring all that light down into the fog and shadows. (laughs) It’s amazing what we manage to carry in this poor old body. 🙂