~The Descent of Consciousness~

   Of equal importance to the ascent of kundalini shakti, is the descent of shiva, the consciousness principle. Pure energy, raw kundalini, has no consciousness. It is wild and untamed, very unproductive in terms of human needs. To become refined it needs to be enjoined with higher consciousness. This truth is most succinctly put by the well known feminist maxim - "an erect penis has no conscience"!
   So as well as aspiring to raise our latent energy to higher levels, and raise our conscious-ness to more divine realms (shakti or the student's role) we also need to bring down higher awareness to the mundane level or our everyday life (shiva or the teacher's role). Tantra teaches that it is not just a process of spending all your efforts raising kundalini energy towards some supreme goal whilst neglecting normal life, but that simultaneously, one should strive to spiritualise the lower aspects of oneself by bringing your higher consciousness into those areas. This is likened to shedding light into darkened places - that is, taking on the role of guru, or the enlightener. Just as Shakti must try to travel up to Shiva, Shiva must also make efforts to descend towards Shakti. There is a lovely little story which symbolises this journey and the union of Shiva and Shakti.
   Shiva lived alone on his mountain top. Shakti lived alone in her valley. Neither was prepared to surrender to the other and even through magic, they tried to make the other come to their abode. This plan failed dismally, so eventually they each set off, she upwards, he downwards. They met up somewhere in the middle and got married at a place which is called the heart centre. (Note: This centre, Anahata Chakra, is depicted by a 6 pointed star which is the combination of an upward pointing triangle (Shiva=mountain) and a downward pointing triangle (Shakti=valley). Shakti returned home to bear her child whilst Shiva went back to his abode on high (typical male!). As the young child grew up, it went in search of its father until one day it found Shiva on his mountain top.
   Now this allegory, (if you can get past the apparent male chauvinism), illustrates the upward and downward phases of our own personal spiritual journey, with the key points being:
(i) Shakti (energy) is the grounding, earthly element of matter. Shiva, (consciousness) is the heavenly, diffuse element of higher mind.
(ii) To realise their evolutionary purposes and to create something of greater value

beyond just themselves, these two elements of our own self must both move away from their base positions in search of each other.
(iii) They will meet in the heart centre where they will join in a unitive act of procreation.
(iv) The product of that union (our baby spiritual self) will then be born and raised by our mother (natural instincts) to one day go in search of its spiritual cause (that higher consciousness).
   For anything to evolve in life, to jump into a higher orbit, its level of energy must be increased by a collision with some other entity along with an injection of intelligence - that is, the laws of nature. That is now the conclusion of atomic physicists and that has also been the teaching of tantra for thousands of years. As a gross example, in making a knife, raw iron ore must be mined, heated, purified and worked. The base element of iron has evolved, we could say, into something of higher purpose. This is the ascent of shakti.
   But in fact, prior to that, for this new thing to be created, formless consciousness had to be made manifest through a gradual application of awareness into action. First you had the idea for a knife. It was just an idea with no real form. Then you planned the project in your head, maybe drew a design and eventually made the actions necessary for its creation. Thereby the injection of shiva into the shakti has created a new entity. We can say here that the idea of the knife has evolved, but in a more grounding way. This is the descent of Shiva.
   So how does all this relate to we mortal women and men? Of what relevance is all this to the process of a mother and her children? This interweaving of energy and consciousness which underlies all existence, this path of tantra that we are already on, this model of human evolution called Kundalini Yoga, all reflect that same process of humans coming into manifestation. From unseen to seen, even before sperm meets egg, a baby is being created by this process. It begins when the consciousness element of a woman (her shiva-ness) realises it wants or needs to go forth and multiply, to create a new form for itself. It begins when a woman's elemental maternal nature (her shakti-ness) awakens and causes her to go in search of a suitable father. Along the way there is a meeting of hearts and bodies and then a new being is created from out of that. It is this very early journey of the woman, well prior to pregnancy, which I will be addressing in the next chapter and then following on from that, I will be developing this theme in the later processes of conscious conception, conscious pregnancy and conscious childbirth.