Zymosium:2 Riding the Kundalini Dragon: Copied from Julian Walker

Hi Everyone!

This is the official announcement for Zymposium #2. (Part One is Up ! See here…)

Title: Riding the Kundalini Dragon: Integrating Altered States

What: The Zymposium is an online community event in which a group of presenters take turns blogging on their own pages on a specific topic. All the presenters - as well as whomever wants to jump in from the readership engage each day in a discussion (via the comments section of that blogpost) of that day's piece and the ideas/issues it raises.

When: Starting this coming Wednesday the 25th of July we will do three days of presenters. Then we'll take a break over the weekend and start up again on Monday July 30th through Friday August 3, for five more days of presentation.

Who: This time around we have gone one better! We have 8 presenters who will post in the following order:

Wednesday 7/25: Julian
Thursday 7/26:      Delia
Friday 7/27:            Christiana
BREAK
Monday 7/30:       Michael
Tuesday 7/31:      Sa'Rah
Wednesday 8/1:  Daate
Thursday 8/2:       Mijit
Friday 8/3:            Jim

Z1: Last Time Around

Last time around we had 7 presenters from as far afield as Los Angeles, Italy, Germany, the Bay Area, Kentucky, and Croatia. I got a lot of flak from a couple loud voices because there were no women in the group. Well, that Zymposium was organized in about 20 minutes - literally, and I chose the group of people who had been the most active in a few blog and pod discussions and who had impressed me as having the most grounded and intelligent spiritual perspectives - not insignificantly, they were also all so active on Zaadz  that I emailed all 6 and got affirmative replies within minutes!

Because the topic of Z1 was Integrative Spirituality: Grounded Contemporary Perspectives and I had chosen the presenters, there was also a clamoring concern that it would be a monological expression of my point of view through 6 other voices…. NOT SO!

While there was a lot of mutual respect and support, the ensuing dialog was filled with differing points of view and heated debate. For my money the 7 blogposts, 2000+ readers and (at this point) over 400 comments contained some of the most engaged, educational, to-the-point, beautiful interactions I have seen thus far on Zaadz. Check out Elektroglide's brilliant post that I think probably holds the Zaadz record right now with over 100 comments!


Z2: The Fire This Time

Well this time we have 4 men and 4 women! But oddly enough, I think we are all in the USA. Can't you just hear the xenophobe accusations?! :O)

For Z2 I have chosen presenters who have written intelligently about altered states of consciousness,  deep transformational process, serious spiritual practice and/or energetic initiation of the kind generally associated with the term “kundalini.”

From my perspective, kundalini is a mythic symbol/signifier that refers to the innate ability of the life-force to evolve, heal, purify and awaken itself - and this innate ability shows up in potent and undeniable ways via certain forms of yoga, bodywork, breathwork as well as in ecstatic dance, meditation, the use of psychoactive sacraments, and in some cases through spontaneous awakening. This is not a metaphysical belief or cool idea, it is a rather a direct, multi-faceted and potent experiential process. It is also a fast-track into the depths of the usually unconscious realms of the psyche. As such it is rich with light and dark, meaningful as well as distorting material in the form of archetype, somatic process, mythic symbol, intense emotion, trauma, ecstatic bliss, spiritual insight etc…

Under this definition I know that all of our 8 presenters know some aspect of the journey of Riding the Kundalini Dragon, and all 8 have had to explore what it means both practically and/or intellectually to go about Integrating Altered States.

I am hoping that we can begin by creating a safe and sacred space for deep exploration and candid sharing - and ask that readers and commenters respect the vunerability involved in bringing these kind of numinous, potent and often enigmatic experiences into the light of day….

dragon