Two Things Can be True

On Pragmatism, Tradition, and the Dance of Discernment

In my previous post, “Kuṇḍalinī Beyond Yogi Bhajan,” I struck a critical position with regards to Bhajan’s “Kundalini Yoga.” My intention there was to highlight the widespread conflation of Bhajan’s system of “Kundalini Yoga” with teachings on the kuṇḍalinī-śakti that are rooted in the Śākta-Śaiva Tantrik traditions.

I clarified this distinction after receiving an email from a student, whose concern demonstrated the need for establishing some distance between what we’re doing at our upcoming Kuṇḍalinī Retreat — and what we are not.

Within hours of sending this post to the Embodied Philosophy community, I received another email — this time from a woman who had derived some benefit from her experience in the Kundalini Yoga world. She shared some of her personal story with me — which demonstrated that, for her at least, the practices had served her for where she was at and what she needed at the time.

Her message was gracious, honest, and filled with an ethos I respect: the impulse to understand, to question, and to hold space for complexity.

It also was not without some misinterpretation of what I was arguing in that previous post, and so it has given me another opportunity to clarify a few things.

When Strong Words Are Misread

There was nothing in the spirit of her email that I disagreed with. However, her response highlighted something I’ve been reflecting on for some time — that in trying to speak clearly and unapologetically about the distinctions between traditions, I may at times use language that inadvertently implies judgments I don’t actually hold. So I want to take a moment to clarify not just my intention, but the broader philosophical and contemplative orientation from which the points were being made.

Historical Clarity Is Not a Personal Critique

In my classes and writings, when I speak about the difference between modern adaptations and the historical traditions from which they derive, I often take care to note that this isn’t a statement about efficacy. Just because a practice is new, or doesn’t come from a long lineage, doesn’t mean it doesn’t work. The real test of any contemplative or spiritual practice is whether it opens, expands, and ultimately serves the life of a practitioner — and that’s something only the practitioner can know from their own lived experience.

I therefore consider myself a spiritual pragmatist. If something helps a person live more meaningfully, love more deeply, and navigate life with greater wisdom, clarity, and resilience, then it’s doing its job. I have no interest in invalidating what someone has found helpful. And I would never disavow another person’s experience just because the historical or philosophical roots of their practice are different from those of my own.

But There’s a Reason We Draw Boundaries

That said, not all practices are equally safe or equally suited for all practitioners. Some traditions — especially those rooted in centuries of transmission and refinement — come with built-in safeguards. They’ve been tested, adapted, and passed on over generations of practitioners. And others — particularly those invented in the 20th century, often by charismatic leaders — don’t have that same degree of historical scaffolding or accountability.

So when I speak critically about Yogi Bhajan’s system, I’m not speaking about every practitioner who found meaning or healing in it. I’m observing the historical truth of what it was: a system largely invented by a single man, drawing on disparate sources (including Sikhism) while using the term kuṇḍalinī in ways that have little to no connection to the Tantrik traditions from which that term originates.

Distinguishing Is Not Rejecting

My recent reflection was written after that first individual reached out with concerns. She was understandably confused by the language around kuṇḍalinī and worried we might be teaching Bhajan’s version of Kundalini Yoga. So I wanted to make it clear that we are not.

But drawing boundaries is not the same thing as rejecting someone else’s path. To draw a distinction is not to say, “Your experience is wrong.” It’s to say, “This is what we’re doing — and this is what we’re not doing.” That kind of clarity is intended as an act of respect and care.

In the process of sādhana, it is important to cultivate boundaries — not to cut ourselves off from others, but to preserve the sacredness of the space we’re co-creating. And in the case of communities that have suffered abuse, those boundaries become even more important. We must name what has harmed people — not so as to shame those who experienced things differently, but to broaden awareness and understanding so that history need not repeat itself.

On Addiction, Safety & Spiritual Responsibility

In the context of recovery from various kinds of addiction, there’s a well-understood principle: healing often requires creating distance. Distance from the substances, habits, behaviours, or environments that might trigger a “relapse” and thus ultimately undermine our well-being. To create distance in this way isn’t an act of condemnation; it’s an act of generosity toward oneself and others. Similarly, in a spiritual or contemplative life, we sometimes need to draw boundaries and create distance — not to judge or reject others, but to create the conditions for safety, integrity, and a deep albeit subtle capacity for contemplative knowledge and insight. This gesture of establishing healthy spiritual boundaries is, I think, an important act of care that we can offer a modern spiritual world that loves to melt everything into “oneness” or a prematurely assumed perspective of “unity-consciousness.”

I’ve seen, firsthand, the psychological damage caused by some of the intense breathwork practices popularized in modern “Kundalini Yoga” settings — especially among those already prone to dissasociation. This is not to say that all such practices are inherently harmful, but to say that without the proper context, preparation, and support, they can be destabilizing. Because I’ve witnessed this phenomenon myself, I feel a responsibility to speak clearly about what is and isn’t being offered in the retreats and programs that we host through Embodied Philosophy.

Kālī as the Fierce Face of Love

There’s a tendency in contemporary spirituality to equate love with a kind of softness that privileges only “love and light.” But anyone who’s practiced deeply knows that love also has a fierce face. In the Hindu tradition, that face is often represented by the goddess Kālī — slayer of demons, drinker of the blood of ignorance, donning a necklace of skulls.

In a story famously found in the Devī-Mahātmya — a 5th-6th century Sanskrit text central to Śākta traditions —, we find a powerful asura (demon) named Raktabīja (literally “blood-seed”) who had a boon that made him nearly invincible. Every time a drop of his blood touched the ground, a new duplicate of him would spring forth from it. During a battle between the devas (gods) and the asuras, Raktabīja proved impossible to defeat, because any wound he sustained would multiply him endlessly.

To defeat him, Kālī was summoned by the gods. In her fearsome form, she fought Raktabīja with a terrifying intensity. To prevent his blood from touching the ground and creating more demons, she spread her tongue wide, then lapped up and drank every drop of his blood before it could fall to the ground. Ultimately, she consumes him completely, ending his reign of terror and his contageous spread of ignorance.

I should note that there is an important argument against defining the goddess Kālī solely as a goddess of destruction. The resistance to this popular trope rests on the recognition that her symbolic and theological role is far more nuanced and multidimensional than this trope implies. While Kālī is popularly depicted in often fierce and sometime terrifying forms — wielding weapons, adorned with skulls, and standing on the body of Śiva — her iconography and mythology are not about violence or annihilation.

Instead, her “destruction” is transformative: she deconstructs the negative vicissitudes of ego, ignorance (avidyā), and those internal demons that block one’s contemplative process. She is the power of time (kāla) that dissolves all forms back into their source — not out of malice, but out of necessity, to make way for renewal and regeneration. In Tantrik traditions, she is often revered as the most compassionate form of the divine, because she liberates beings by forcefully removing what binds them.

To reduce Kālī to a “goddess of destruction” is to miss her deeper function as a fierce expression of wisdom and maternal love — a love willing to confront illusion, rupture comfort, and sever attachments for the sake of deeper freedom. She is not destruction for its own sake, but the sacred force of dissolution that clears space for truth, rebirth, and perhaps even a radical transformation.

So while I personally have a deep affection for those images of Kālī in which she’s holding the decapitated head of Raktabīja, I’m not advocating that we all rage through the world with an analogous intensity. But I do believe that there is a much-needed role in the modern yoga and spiritual community for fierce discernment, for confronting certain falsehoods, for saying “no” to forms of manipulation that are often cloaked in mystical language. Because compassion doesn’t mean we blur all boundaries and speak only in buttery, affable tones to one another — nor does it suggest that we help each other by avoiding calling a spade a spade. Sometimes, a refreshing dose of critical clarity is the most compassionate thing we can offer.

As the person who wrote to me so beautifully said, two things can be true. People can have profound experiences in flawed systems. Teachers can transmit wisdom and cause harm. Traditions can be powerful and still require critique.

On Rationality, Mystery, & the Role of Thought

Toward the end of her message, the writer raised a point about rationality and whether I over-emphasize it. Do I privilege fact and reason over intuition, mystery, and the non-linear?

It’s a fair question — and again, one that I think stems from a slight misreading of what I was saying.

To put it simply, I don’t worship certainty. I don’t believe that a contemplative life can — or should — be reduced to data, logic, or tidy conclusions. But I do believe that how we think matters. I am committed to the position that theory, reflection, and philosophical coherence help safeguard us from falling into seductive but potentially harmful belief systems.

In the Śākta-Śaiva tradition, the goal is not to escape reason, but to cultivate discernment and to eradicate intellectual and spiritual ignorance — and, importantly, to know when a non-rational experience is drawing us toward expansion, and when it’s pulling us into delusion. Because common sense reveals that not all mystery is liberating. Some mystery entraps and ensnares us. Some states of awareness cut us off from the world and lead to dissociation rather than integration.

So while I would not call myself “anti-mystery,” I am pro-discernment. My interest is in a kind of theory that liberates rather than confines. And a way of thinking that makes more space for the sacred — not less.

In Closing

I write all of this not to re-litigate anything, but to hopefully express my appreciation for dialogue — for the kind of respectful engagement that deepens understanding rather than shuts it down.

We are living through a time when many spiritual and contemplative communities are developing a maturity with regards to the very real harms that have been perpetuated in the name of enlightenment. In the face of this, it’s essential that we not collapse into cynicism, disillusionment, or in “throwing the baby out with the bathwater.” But it’s equally essential that we not bypass the work of critical thought — nor the process of seeking philosophical and historical clarity.

We can and should, I think, hold space for complexity — for the “both/and.” We can honor the personal experiences of others at the same time that we question the structures that made them possible. We can love both compassionately and fiercely, and — most importantly — with clear eyes.

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Interested in joining the Kuṇḍalinī Retreat?

In today’s spiritual marketplace, “kuṇḍalinī awakening” is a well-worn phrase — often reduced to vague “energies” or an exotic spiritual spectacle. But within the classical traditions of non-dual Śaiva and Śākta Tantra, kuṇḍalinī-śakti is not simply an experience we might have. She is the very principle of creativity and revelation, the dynamic pulse of consciousness itself. This retreat seeks to recover the depth, nuance, and ethical implications of these teachings — and to offer a somatic language and meditative pathway for practicing them in real time.

Kuṇḍalinī & Subtle Embodiment Retreat
July 10th–16th, 2025 | Live Online via Zoom | Recordings Available
9:00–11:30 AM & 1:00–3:30 PM ET daily

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