Kundalini Or Cardiologist? – How to Handle Symptoms during Meditation Wisely

Energy Patterns, physical sensations, and the complexity of the body-mind

I recently received the following question from a mindsight student:

“I was wondering if you could address something that has been capturing my awareness almost since I started meditating three years ago. I have brought to your attention several times, either through email or through direct conversation, several physical sensations that I have experienced during formal practice. These sensations often become borderline intolerable, (albeit they have lessened in frequency during recent months).

The following are examples of the physical sensations that I have experienced during formal practice:
1). Extreme hot sensations shooting through my body as if it’s on fire.
2). Loud humming sound in my ears.
3). The need to constantly swallow.
4). Severe chest pain, as if I’m having a heart attack.
5). Elevated blood pressure. (240/200)
6). Heaviness in hands and feet, as if I can’t move them.
7). Itchy face and scalp as if bugs are crawling all over them.
8). Feeling of deep lows and despondency.

Your response to some of these symptoms seemed to suggest that they are probably unrelated to meditation and are most likely a medical issue.

I happened to be reading a book by Jack Kornfield (Bringing The Dharma Home) last spring when I came across something very interesting that seemed to explain these very symptoms that I had been experiencing. He calls it, “a series of powerful energetic phenomena, sometimes called the awakening of the ‘kundalini’.” He basically suggests that energy centres and chakras are going through a profound opening, hence the intolerable and quite frightening symptoms. Almost all the symptoms that I have experienced, (including the feeling of heart attack), was mentioned. I must say, it was some relief for me to have an explanation come forth at what seemed to be a critical phase in my practice.

Going forward, it would be helpful for me to understand more about these symptoms (other than just reading about them in a random book), as well as gain some understanding with respect to how seriously I should take them if and when they occur again.

Would you be able to give me some deeper insight into what would be considered the non-pleasant symptoms associated with formal practice and if there is any validity in the “kundalini” that Jack Kornfield writes about?

This is indeed a very central question in meditation, which requires a cogent and differentiated response, not only because we are dealing with significant complexity, but also because the meditator’s progress, health and safety are at stake.

Historically, different names have been used to describe these patterns, Kundalini being one of them. In the Chinese tradition, you have Qi energy. Trying to find correspondence between our western notions of different energy patterns and those ancient notions is somewhat of a futile endeavor, as different traditions and cultures have different maps with which to map the same territory of reality. Let’s thus simply establish that no matter how you look at it, we are energy flowing in different patterns that require regulation.

The Kundalini energy is symbolized by a snake lying dormant like a coil at the base of the spine. As the practitioner cultivates consciousness and develops ever-higher levels of awareness, the snake uncoils itself, moving up the spine through several energy centers called chakras, all the way to the pineal gland and then forward to the region of the medial prefrontal cortex, at which point the adept reaches enlightenment. Kundalini energy flow thus manifests in different forms depending on the level of integration. You may realize the resonant echo with the biblical snake. Unlike popular misunderstanding, the snake is not a symbol of evil, but of fertility, creative life force, continual renewal of life, rebirth, transformation, immortality, and healing.

Let’s remind ourselves that we are open complex systems of different kinds of energy flow patterns. These include energy flowing in the form of physical structures such as our organs, in the form of mental patterns such as emotions, thoughts, and the way we relate to others and the world around us, as well as awareness energy patterns within consciousness. Not only that, but the non-living elements we are made of, such as subatomic particles, atoms, and molecules have their own energy patterns we are part of. Each energy pattern has a unique feel to it (to the extent that it can actually be felt) and requires unique methods of regulation.

It is a hallmark of open complex systems to self-organize and self-regulate. When our natural tendencies of energy flow patterns can freely unfold on both the body- and the mind-level of processing, our energy flow is integrated and we feel at ease and healthy. When on the contrary these energy flow patterns are interfered with, and the organism’s self-regulating mechanisms become overwhelmed, our energy flow patterns fall into chaos and/or rigidity, which we experience as symptoms and disease. Symptoms can be a sign of disease, meaning that the chaos or rigidity is a consequence of dysregulation and will require regulation back to balance and integration, or they can be a transitional stage from chronic dysregulation to integration, meaning that they are the consequence of regulation and require patient perseverance on the path.

Different symptoms are different kinds of energy flow with different causes and have therefore different meanings. They can’t be lumped together into one soup. When the student mentions that I apparently said her symptoms were unrelated to meditation, it would have been within a very specific context of a specific question about one or a few specific symptoms. What I said could never be true as a general statement, since meditation practice can worsen, improve or be unrelated to specific symptoms.

Another historical point has to be clearly made. In comparison to today, during the times those notions of Kundalini and Qi energy emerged, scientific medical knowledge was rudimentary. Although these ancient cultures were very advanced in the way they knew how to help people regulate their energy flow, there were also a huge number of diseases beyond their reach of influence, which we can nowadays treat or cure. Let’s take the example of coronary artery blockage. Someone with angina can today be diagnosed with coronary artery blockage, stents can be put in and the person’s life span with a high quality of life can be prolonged by many years. What 2500 years ago would have just been part of the course – having severe chest pain on exercise, shortly after being bedridden by pain and end up dying within a relatively short period of time – would in today’s climate be completely unacceptable and preventable. In other words, we have to approach symptoms much differently today than one would have 2500 years ago, because we have so many more treatment options available to us.

When we examine symptoms during meditation practice, looking at their patterns is important. Do they only appear during practice and disappear the moment we stop? Do preexisting symptoms get worse during practice but then improve significantly after it? Or do the same preexisting symptoms stay the same or get worse? Are the symptoms of the kind that suggests a possible treatable illness or even danger, or are they a functional part of meditation practice? These questions may start to give you the feeling that there is no way you will ever be able to find clear answers. Welcome to the meditator’s club! These are not easy questions to answer, even though there is a very simple principle that should be followed to get to the bottom of these questions: Always make sure to exclude a physical cause of such symptoms by involving a physician. This does not mean that medicine knows everything or that calamities can always be avoided, but it does mean that you will reduce to a minimum the chance of mishandling what’s going on with your organism. As a physician, there are many symptoms that instinctively raise a red flag. This is not the case for laypeople, and I can therefore not stress the importance enough of following the outlined principle.

To make the point here is just one of many examples I encountered in my practice. A patient was referred to me for mindfulness training because she was diagnosed with a panic disorder. As she walked in through the door of my office, she tripped slightly. I casually commented on it and wondered why she tripped, to which she responded by telling me that this happens very occasionally as she felt she was getting clumsier with age. We then started the interview, and she told me that she was intermittently tired for no reason, intermittently felt light-headed and weak, combined with tingling and numbness in her fingers. When I asked her whether she felt anxious, she said that she felt a bit anxious when the symptoms appeared. She was told these symptoms were typical of panic attacks. She had already been treated by a psychotherapist for panic attacks and a naturopath was prescribing stress-reducing remedies. Nothing helped. Life history was rather unremarkable with regards to any psychopathology. She came from attuned family circumstances and lead an overall successful life. She described some stress at work, which had been worrying her for about six months. In my mind, the clinical picture did not add up to a panic disorder, and her tripping as she came into my office became an increasingly bright shining red light as I was sitting there listening to her. I told her that the evidence for a panic disorder was very tenuous and that I was thinking about some neurological problem, for which I wanted her to get a consultation by a neurologist. It turned out she had an early stage of MS. Had the neurological findings come back negative, I would have had more freedom to help her explore her mind.

The moral of the story is that we are naturally scared to discover we have an illness, and it can appear like a soothing proposition to interpret symptoms within an energetic framework such as Kundalini energy that gives us a sense of being in control. Unfortunately, our ability to regulate energy flow has its limits as we all are inexorably vanishing and our bodies inevitably break down as part of the great law of impermanence. Coming to terms with that is one of the major goals of mindfulness practice.

Let’s now address one by one the symptoms this student presents:

1. Extreme hot sensations shooting through my body as if it’s on fire: Meditation practice has a profound impact on many physiological functions, including hormonal regulation and metabolism, which may explain the sensation of heat (I am foregoing details on the possible physiology of this mechanism). In isolation, this is not an uncommon symptom during meditation and therefore not necessarily one to be worried about. It can indeed be explored and understood as part of a new energy flow regulation within the context of moving towards greater integration. Should the symptom persist over a longer time frame and get worse, a visit to the doctor may end up not being a luxury.

2. Loud humming sound in my ears: Same as number 1., as long as it is not accompanied by other symptoms like hearing loss or ear pressure, in which case consultation with an ENT specialist would be indicated.

3. The need to constantly swallow: This is a very common symptom during meditation, which may be connected to increased vagal activity during the stress-reducing process of meditating. It can be quite a nuisance and therefore an opportunity to bring kind acceptance to what’s going on. When it occasionally happened to me during a teaching situation with students, I noticed a sense of embarrassment arising, accompanied by the narrative that ‘as a teacher, I should be much more advanced than that!’ – actually quite hilarious when you think about it. In my experience, this symptom arises particularly when the meditator is stressed, in the process of relaxing and releasing stress, or deeply settled in peaceful awareness as an unexpected internal conflict arises. It can also arise without an identifiable cause.

4. Severe chest pain, as if I’m having a heart attack: This symptom is potentially concerning, and I would not hesitate to suggest having the heart checked out by a cardiologist. If it turns out that physically the heart is fine, it could be a symptom of high anxiety, even if the person does not experience it as such. Furthermore, it can be the activation of painful or traumatic implicit memories that are starting to come to the surface because of the meditation practice. Continuing to deepen the practice with an emphasis on somatic attention, and observing what kind of memories and stories appear on the cognitive level, would then be the way to go.

5. Elevated blood pressure (240/200): I’m not sure how this student measures her blood pressure while she meditates, but assuming that these numbers are correct, I would immediately send her to a specialist for diagnosis and treatment. These numbers are outside the realm of primary energy and information flow discussions. Because of the enormous likelihood of all kinds of nasty health consequences such high blood pressure is not worth the risk for, it would be unconscionable not to have this medically looked at and treated. Both numbers are very concerning, but the second diastolic pressure particularly so, suggesting there may be a chronic problem that requires medication treatment. This is not to say that once proper medical treatment has been sought, meditation cannot positively influence the long-term evolution of the problem – it can. However, we always have to respect the hierarchy of needs, and as Meister Eckhart (German philosopher, theologian and mystic – 1260-1328) used to say: “If a hungry beggar comes your way while you are in a rapture of enlightenment, stop your rapture and feed the beggar.” If there is a physical problem of such magnitude, it has to be dealt with first before we can then involve the mind. Even if this blood pressure is intermittent, these numbers are extremely high, dangerous and in need of immediate medical attention.

6. Heaviness in hands and feet, as if I can’t move them: This is a common symptom, and again, as long as there is no other evidence of neurological problems, not one to be concerned about. I would have to explore this experience in more detail with the student in question, but this symptom may be connected to either of two things, deep relaxation and letting go, or a form of psychological dissociation.

7. Itchy face and scalp as if bugs are crawling all over them: Again, assuming no other neurological or dermatological problem exists, when tensions come to the surface and subside during meditation, itching, and tingling can become very prominent. Continue with somatic attention and releasing tensions down into the earth.

8. Feeling of deep lows and despondency: This is a huge topic with many facets, which would require a closer examination of this student’s particular circumstances. Maybe the student does not apply meditation techniques properly and therefore unwittingly causes energy and information flow dysregulation. Maybe implicit memory material arises and meditation alone will not be enough to integrate all the domains of integration; in this case, adding psychotherapy would be required to address domains of integration meditation cannot directly deal with. The student may also have touched the existential level of having to confront the radical impermanence of existence and all the illusions we create not to have to deal with it. Recognizing this situation and embracing impermanence would be the way to work through and transcend this stage of consciousness evolution.

In short, the kinds of intolerable and frightening symptoms Jack Kornfield talks about within the context of awakening are not associated with dangerous chronic physical conditions requiring medical treatment. It is important to recognize the difference between these two sets of symptoms, which is not an easy task by any means.

I am very thankful to this student for bringing up this question. It has given me an opportunity to show the complexity of the body-mind, and how in this business there is no room for facile cookie-cutter responses that feed our narcissistic need for always wanting to be somewhere more glamorous than where we are. The body has its limitations and we are not omnipotent. We always have to remember the difference between healing (finding a new mental equilibrium around the body’s limitations) and curing (getting the body back to its pre-injury state). The body inevitably breaks down and the mind does not have the power to stop or prevent that. Cures become increasingly rare beyond child- and middle adulthood as healing and maintaining functionality becomes increasingly important. This question also gave us the opportunity to realize that meditating today is not the same as meditating 2500 years ago and that our scientific and technological advances, not to speak of our cultural socio-political changes, require new mind maps and new ways of seeing reality and the world, while we can still preserve ancient wisdom and experience that is still relevant today.

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Automaticity of the human mind

Human function, action, cognition and behavior under the lens of automaticity

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1. Left brain perspective

For several consecutive early spring days, a single, distinctive fly appeared to relish the bright sunlight illuminating my bathroom. We have grown familiar, coexisting as two entities engaged in our respective routines. I designate her as "she"—perhaps influenced by the feminine grammatical gender of la mouche (French), la mosca (Italian), and die Fliege (German)—an intuitive attribution rather than a biological assertion. She occasionally positions herself on the curtain railing above my bathtub, observing as I shower. More frequently, she rests on the windowsill, tracking my movements as I shave, and at times briefly alights on my hair for a few seconds. I have been aware of her presence throughout, akin to an inquisitive cohabitant sharing this confined space, but today I intentionally sought a deeper engagement.

She was once again stationed on the windowsill, basking in the sunlight, as I shaved. I approached closely, examining her large, compound eyes, and posed the question, “What is it like to be a fly?” Initially, my cognition activated a predictable analytical response, retrieving stored knowledge about her physiology: a head encasing a compact brain; expansive, multifaceted eyes affording a broad visual field; antennae functioning as olfactory and gustatory sensors; specialized mouthparts adapted for sponging or piercing-sucking; a thorax anchoring six articulated legs, rapid wings, and club-shaped halteres for flight stabilization; and an abdomen housing digestive and reproductive systems, concealed from view. Her exoskeleton, black with muted grey striations, bore a subtle, fur-like texture, as though she had ornamented herself for this encounter—a sizable specimen, impossible to ignore.

Yet, I deliberately suspended this intellectual framework, opting instead to engage her in a silent, receptive state. My question became more personal and changed to “what is it like to be you”? I consciously down-regulated the default mode network—the neural substrate of self-referential thought—relinquishing the ego’s persistent drive to assert its permanence. This ego, in its dualistic framework, projects constructed identities onto the external ‘other’, rendering her so alien that I might, without reflection, swat her away, extinguishing a life deemed insignificant, irritating, or even repellent by that limited perspective.

In this shift, a different entity began to emerge within my awareness—not a mere object, but a presence actively relating to me, exhibiting a form of consciousness distinct yet perceptible. Her curiosity, perhaps reciprocal, prompted her to take flight and settle briefly on my hair. I remained immobile, registering the faint tactile sensation of her tentative exploration of my surface—an interaction probing my identity as much as I sought hers. The contact was transient; she soon returned to the windowsill, fixing her gaze upon me. I speculated that she might, in her own unknowable way, ponder a parallel question: “What is it like to be this massive, terrestrial organism, incapable of flight, beyond my capacity to name?” The perceived separation—me here, her there—dissolved into a unified ‘we’, marked by a tangible exchange of vitality through our shared, living awareness. Though our modes of consciousness diverge, they intersect intimately, each of us enacting existence according to our inherent capacities. Together, we participated in a dynamic interplay, a microcosm of the universe’s unfolding, so affecting that tears briefly surfaced, reflecting regret for the countless instances of inattentiveness lost to automaticity.

This encounter with such a remarkable organism illuminated a progression of awareness. Initially, I had navigated the ‘dark night of the soul’—a dualistic state of nihility, a relative nothingness characterized by existential desolation and the collapse of meaning within a self-other framework. Beyond this, I accessed a non-dual absolute nothingness, a broader mode of awareness where subject-object distinctions dissolve into a unified field of being, devoid of relational constructs. Yet, this was not the terminus; it opened into emptiness—the ultimate awareness mode, a boundless, vibrant expanse where the extraordinary manifests within the ordinary flux of daily existence. This state, achieved through direct presence with this fly, surpasses any chemically induced psychedelic experience in its clarity and depth, revealing a profound interconnectedness inherent in the fabric of life, the extraordinariness of ordinary existence. No answer could ever come close to the tantalizing peace of timeless questions.

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2. Right brain vantage point

For several radiant spring mornings, a singular, remarkable fly has basked in the golden sunlight flooding my bathroom. We have become familiar companions, each merrily tending to our daily rites. At times, she—yes, she, anointed feminine by the lilting echoes of la mouche, la mosca, die Fliege, a soft intuition humming through language—perches atop the curtain railing above my bathtub, a silent witness to my shower’s misty veil. More often, she lingers on the windowsill, her gaze fixed upon me as I shave, now and then darting to alight for a fleeting instant upon my hair. I’ve felt her presence all along—a curious housemate in this shared sanctuary—but today, I vowed to bridge the chasm between us.

There she rested once more, cradled in the sun’s warm embrace upon the windowsill, watching me wield my razor with quiet intent. I leaned closer, peering into her vast, prismatic eyes—kaleidoscopes of a secret world—and murmured, “What is it like to be a fly?” At first, my mind thrummed with the familiar pulse of knowledge: her head, a miniature cathedral of instinct; those grand, jeweled eyes unveiling a boundless vista; antennae, fragile wands of scent and savor; mouthparts sculpted for sipping or piercing; her thorax, a delicate frame bearing six crooked legs, wings that shimmer with thunderous speed, and halteres, poised like a dancer’s plumb line; her abdomen, a veiled chamber of life’s mysteries. She gleamed, black as night with faint grey stripes, her form cloaked in a gossamer sheen, as though she’d adorned herself for this tender rendezvous.

This time, like as many other times as I can possibly honour in daily life, I let this torrent of facts dissolve, beckoning her to meet me in the hush of silence. The question changed to become more personal: “What is it like to be you?” I stilled the restless clamor of my mind, loosening the ego’s tenacious hold—that brittle self, desperate to cling to its mirage of eternity, casting endless conceptual shadows upon the being before me. So remote she might appear, I could, in a careless flicker, swat her away, deeming her life a trifling annoyance, a speck of disdain. But no—a different essence began to bloom within my consciousness.

A presence unfurled, no longer separate but alive with me, awake in her own cryptic grace, her curiosity a mirror to my own. Suddenly, she soared, settling upon my hair. I stood statue-still, captivated by the faint tickle of her pilgrimage across my scalp, a gentle quest into the enigma of my existence. The moment was ephemeral; she soon returned to her sun-gilded throne, gazing back at me. Perhaps she mused, too: “What is it like to be this lumbering, wingless colossus, a riddle beyond my silent tongue?” The gulf between us—me here, her there—dissolved into a luminous we, tethered by a pulsing filament of shared aliveness. Our ways of knowing diverged, yet entwined, each of us threading life’s arc with singular devotion. Together, we spun a strand in the vast loom of the cosmos, a dance so piercing that tears brimmed in my eyes, lamenting a lifetime’s moments lost to the fog of unawareness.

In that tranquil void, beside this astonishing fly, I brushed against an abyss beyond sorrow—a stillness forged in the crucible of the soul’s dark night, rising into the infinite embrace of nothingness. From there, it was but a tender plunge into the world’s embrace, a surrender that let peaceful nothingness blossom into vibrant emptiness—a radiant field teeming with the miraculous veiled in the everyday. This quiet epiphany, outshining the wildest psychedelic odyssey imaginable, unveiled life’s timeless poetry: unspoken, extraordinary, woven into the ordinary cadence of days. The nameless question remains.

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Searching Everywhere But Where It Counts

Forgetting that we have a mind.

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October 12, 2024

Before you worry about symptoms such as depression and anxiety and how to improve or get rid of them, before you get your blood boiling arguing with people who can't deal with anything beyond their own viewpoint, before you develop and become ensconced in your own opinions, before you vilify who disagrees with you, before you shake your head wondering how seemingly obvious facts cannot be agreed upon, before you assume you have no blind spots, before you despair that crowds never learn from history, before you become bitter at humanity's collective stupidity, before you get passionate about religion, mythology, and archetypes, before all that, wouldn't it make sense to inquire into the source of all of it - these symptoms, views, opinions, thoughts, actions, distortions and, frankly, miseries?

While it does not take rocket science to realize that the source of it all is the embodied human mind, for most, embarking on its exploration is at best a big challenge, at worst insurmountable, non-sensical or incomprehensible. How many times have you heard nonsense like “I don’t believe in psychology”, as if the existence of the moon were a matter of belief? How often do patients enter their physician’s office complaining of being anxious or depressed, and are sent home with a prescription without one question that would try to understand how their mind creates such suffering? Many people, including professionals who should know better, live and act as if they had no mind.

The mind is the source of all subjective phenomena and experiences, and we are astoundingly unaware of it. Our mind’s task is to ensure survival and the propagation of our species, not to ensure we live our best life. To this end, it needs to be efficient, rather than concerned about maximizing its potential. Efficiency results by pairing down information processing to the bare minimum. Embedded in the way mind functions are mechanisms that cause reality distortions, delusions, wild beliefs, and a profound obliviousness of one’s own ignorance. Whether we like it or not, our mind drives our lives like our heart pumps blood through our veins. The universe's natural processes have caused us to evolve that way, and for better or worse, we are stuck with a mind that functions sub-optimally as it creates profound reality distortions that seem at first blush to have successfully allowed us to multiply and propagate towards earth dominance. In the long run, however, it turns out that humanity may end up stampeding dangerously close to extinction. To thrive both individually and as a species we must come to terms with our rather dangerous mind and train ourselves to use it beyond its basic survival mode by accessing its inherent potential evolution has graciously also built into it. That takes work, training, effort and patience.

Our human mind provides the capacity for reflection. The mirror reflects what’s in front of it, meaning that as reality beams itself onto the mirror’s surface, the mirror beams it back to us as an image we can then examine from the outside. Notice how what gets examined by looking at the mirror is not reality itself, but an image of it. Our brain provides a similar process in the form of consciousness, whereby it maps reality in a virtual form we then can observe and manipulate. However, while the mirror reflects reality exactly as it is, the virtual reality consciousness creates is not only a map of reality, but that map is modified into a new creation. The brain as mapper functions as our central relationship organ that enables us to reflexively develop a relationship to reality and ourselves by having access to a virtual, mapped and modified reality we can ponder and manipulate. This is how we are self-aware.

As an aside, the mind is more than the creator of a virtual adaptation of reality we can reflexively relate to and have a relationship with. It can transcend self-awareness, and knowingly experience reality and awareness without the detour of mapped mirroring duality. That is the shift from observation to being, from knowing we exist in a universe to realizing we are the universe. More about that in another context.

The eye has a blind spot where the optic nerve enters the retina, but you don’t see it. You have the impression of enjoying a seamless field of vision without two black holes in the middle, even though the holes are there. The brain manages to fill in the missing information to make the field seem seamless. Extrapolate that to the whole brain to realize that to function effectively for everyday survival our brain adapts our field of consciousness in two ways: It fills what’s missing to provide a sense of continuity and simplifies available information to not overwhelm you. It hides blind spots from you to provide continuity and withholds information to ensure efficiency. Both these mechanisms distort reality to ensure survival, while simultaneously laying the foundations for ignorance and suffering.

We each have many blind spots, but the core blind spot affecting us all is the proclivity to live as if we had no mind. We use our minds without realizing the extent to which our experience of reality is created by our mind. Without our conscious knowledge our brain creates the reality we experience. We don’t notice that the reality we experience is our brain’s creation. We mistake our brain’s constructions for reality. This results in a dangerous situation, in which we ignore the fact that our experience is subjectively constructed. We mistakenly believe that what we see and experience is automatically true, and because it seems true it seems real, and because it seems real it cannot be changed. Our primordial blind spot towards the brain’s constructions robs us of freedom of choice, of the power of clear view, wise discernment, and respectfully compassionate mutual understanding.

Our mind’s constructions seem so real that we hold on to them for dear life and want to shove them down other people’s throats without exploring their veracity. We get strongly identified with what we believe we know, emotions take over, and the capacity to hear each other vanishes. Identification with mind processes is the single most destructive problem in the way humans use their minds. Emotions suffocate the mind’s spaciousness to freely consider, question, doubt and explore, and before we know it, we are in conflict. If we cannot agree on facts, emotions drive us to use force to impose our views instead of inquiring more deeply into the divergent realities, and if necessary, compromising to try to resolve complexities. Force can take the form of yelling and screaming at each other, or legal and physical action.

The reality our mind constructs and we can have a relationship with, is in fact threefold. We first have objective reality, which is what happens in the universe independent of whether we know about it or there is anyone around to witness it. This reality consists of energy flow that is independent of how our brains and minds construct reality, and therefore as far from information as energy flow can get. The black death virus killed thousands of people without them knowing what viruses are or being able to see them. Although this is the easiest reality to agree upon, like in the case of flat-earthers, emotions still manage to cause distortions of objective facts.

Subjective reality is our own private experience nobody else has access to. This energy flow is entirely within as a construction by our own brain and mind. Although it is largely independent of objective reality, it is profoundly shaped by interactions with others. Even if everyone denies that I am in pain, if I experience pain, it is totally real for me. That is a difficult reality to agree upon, because seeing it from the outside requires trust and our capacity for empathy.

Then there is intersubjective reality, which is the reality of stories. This energy flow is deeply symbolic in the sense that language and stories are symbolic, therefore experienced as information flow, and a mutual co-creation with others. It is the reality that emerges through mutual narrative construction and is neither objective, nor subjective. It only exists in the interpersonal realm containing people who are willing to participate in it by accepting the shared reality. One such reality is money, but there are many others such as all collective ideas we can share. Money means nothing and has no reality unless it is shared in the interpersonal space. This is also a difficult reality to deal with, because it depends on the mutual capacity to regulate the multilayered energy flow between our intuition, our emotions and our intellect. When that occurs, empathy and clear insight become possible, allowing a degree of harmony within the intersubjective dance of energy and information flow to emerge. Any dance couple may dance a Tango, but those in conflict will not be able to present a harmonious dance.

To manage these three realities we each have a relationship with, requires a good deal of self-awareness and emotional regulation many people don’t have. Much of the time, the mind remains transparent like air to our eyes, invisible or not known, yet profoundly determining how we relate to real reality and live our lives. Like children playing in a house on fire, we remain oblivious to the many ways our ignorance of mind causes suffering and destruction all around.

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