Zombies and Vampires: A Kundalini Mediumship Perspective on our Cultural Obsession

By Lindsay Wilkinson

Question of the day: Why are we (modern America) so absolutely, entirely, overwhelmingly obsessed with stories about zombies and vampires?  Admittedly, I’ve watched my fair share of True Blood and The Walking Dead, and I’m always asking myself why these gory images are so compelling.

The answer I’ve come to…the zombie and the vampire are both manifestations/symbols of a part of the collective unconscious that is literally permeating every part of our modern life.  The vampire is a symbol of manipulation, seduction and persuasion at its worst. Where is this symbol reflected in our outer world?  I see it in every fiber of our capitalist infrastructure, every marketing scheme, every advertising campaign, and in our relationships with others.  Ever had an “energy vampire” literally suck the life out of you at work or at home?  It happens in small ways every…single…day.

We are both manipulating others (the vampire) and being manipulated (unwitting victim) on a daily basis.  This perpetrator/victim cycle is reflected in our work relationships, friendships, family dynamics, everywhere.  It’s no wonder that we become obsessed with the overt and sometimes comically obvious symbolic images and storylines that these underlying archetypes represent.

I’m not saying it’s necessarily a bad thing, it’s just an unconscious thing.  The more that we can bring these patterns of behavior and interaction into our waking, conscious life, the more opportunity the psyche has to heal from these hidden wounds.  Which is essentially why these images and archetypes exist.  They point to a particular type of energetic pattern that is part of the universal human experience.  It is universal for humans to feel seduced by a person, a product, a food, an idea…anything can trigger this energy in us.  It is also universally human for us to play a part in manipulation or control over someone else.  It can be very obvious, like trying to sell something to someone, or a subtle suggestion or innuendo, and anything in between.

What now?  Let’s assume you agree with me that the Vampire image is an unconscious symbol of the human experience of manipulation/control and victimization.  If we become conscious of this pattern in our lives, what then?  The first thing is to recognize this pattern in the outside world (like seeing it in The Walking Dead), the next step is to start to recognize this pattern in our own life, (like trying to get your honey to buy you something or feeling victimized by your boss), the final step is to integrate this pattern into your life and begin to make conscious choices around these energies when they pop up. Maybe that looks like saving up for that thing you want instead of trying to get someone else to buy it for you, or maybe you don’t need it in the first place.  Or instead of feeling taken advantage of or victimized at work, you schedule a meeting with this person to talk about the dynamic or quit your job and do something else.

Why is this effective? Because you literally begin to step outside of an unconscious pattern that’s controlling you (another example of the Vampire energy pattern), and integrate your need for control or to be a victim and make choices (maybe making the same choices, maybe not) which could literally change the course of your life.

Okay, now let’s talk about Zombies.  What are zombies? Completely unconscious. What do zombies do? They consume.  And guess what?  WE are unconscious consumers, all…the…time. We consume everything in sight!  Food, television, iphones, clothes, ideas, politics, news, the list could go on and on.

So, let’s digest (haha) the symbolism here.  Zombies were at one time human (aka conscious), and have degenerated into monsters (our inner demons taking over) and consume only conscious peoples’ brains…leading these new recruits into the same state of monstrous unconsciousness.  And the cycle goes on until there are no conscious minds left and we are left with a post-apocalyptic world of hedonism and chaos.

The other interesting thing about these stories is that there are essentially three groups of leftover humans…the fighters or heroes (think Michonne in The Walking Dead), the manipulator or tricksters (who take advantage of the chaos in order to gain control for themselves), and the quitters who either take themselves out or become listless and depressed, thereby adding to the unconscious group of zombies.

I think that most people have felt all three of these energies in the face of adversity at one time or another.  There have been times in my life that I have fought against the tide of pain and chaos that seemed too overwhelming to confront, I have been the person to take advantage of a chaotic situation, and I have definitely had times where I have given up and allowed the unconscious pattern to continue controlling aspects of my life and my behavior.

So, we are all zombies, all fighters, all tricksters, and all quitters.  Why is The Walking Dead so compelling?  Because often, in the face of an unconscious pattern we are all four of these archetypes/energies at the same time.  We would love to see ourselves as the perpetual heroes, but there’s a part of us (either unconscious or conscious), that lives out the other three patterns as well.

Now that we know we’re all zombies too, what do we do with this information?  We just start to track the pattern in ourselves and others. These patterns of consumerism are repeated in our lives in a million small ways every day.  For example, people often eat on the go.  We have a short lunch at work, we are on our way somewhere, we are exhausted at the end of the day.  So instead of being with our food, smelling it, tasting it, enjoying it, we just CONSUME it.  Quickly, thoughtlessly, and then we’re on to the next thing.  For some people, eating quickly and unconsciously is fine…they make a conscious choice to do it, it doesn’t affect them or whatever.  But for most of us (myself included), we get to the end of the meal, and either we didn’t enjoy it, we’re tired from stuffing it down, we get bloated and uncomfortable…something happens that we wish hadn’t.  So instead of being conscious humans eating a meal, we become unconscious zombies; consuming and moving on.

The vampire and zombie archetypes are here and now.  Every age has different patterns, stories, and archetypes that come to the forefront of humanity and these are some of the strongest and most common patterns we are dealing with in this century.

As a doctor and self-explorer, these energies are very important for me to keep close in my mind. On a daily basis, I come across patients who have literal eating disorders (zombie) and are struggling with what and how to consume.  And other patients who feel sick and victimized by their own bodies, or the medical system or their family or job (vampire).  So for me, these patterns are very real and are very much affecting mine and my patients’ health and well-being.

That alone is enough for me to continue to work with these energies in a conscious way.  I work on these patterns by recognizing them in myself and others (energy tracking), and by doing bodywork to release them from my physical being (Kundalini Mediumship bodywork). And like I’ve said before, there are a thousand, thousand ways to work on these energetic patterns, it doesn’t have to be the way I’ve chosen.  But I would encourage you to take a moment the next time you watch Interview with theVampire or iZombie, to find those unconscious, unintegrated places in yourself, and get to work!

Please feel free to comment, question, disagree, like or whatever this post and please share with anyone who you think would benefit from this type of work!  Finally, full disclosure, I recognize that my own projections and biases and patterns will come through in my writing, just know that I am “consciously” working on it!

From numbness to pain

I had someone come to see me a couple years ago with intense numbness in her left hip.  I don't know if it was from an accident or fall or if it just came on for an unknown reason.  So I start working on it and there was an interesting healing process that happened. Her hip went from numbness to an intense burning pain.  It lasted for a couple months and it was CONSTANT.  She was a little freaked out about it, but it was pretty clear that that was her healing process.  She kept coming in each week, and we kept working.  When I worked on her the burning sensation got more and more intense, but after a couple days it would get a little better.  And that was the process until finally the burning stopped and her hip returned to normal.

I brought her story up today with two different patients who came to see me for more energetic/spiritual work.  I told them both the story because even though she was healing from physical pain, their pattern was the same.  They were dealing with an emotional numbing, and their healing caused them to go through a painful process of actually connecting to their pain.  I decided to write a blog post about it because this same pattern is at work in most people that come in to see me. 

For most people dealing with trauma or "negative emotions" involves numbing out or checking out.  Sometimes people use drugs or alcohol for this, but most common is just disconnecting from their bodies.  Most people learn at an early age to dissociate, disconnect and shove uncomfortable and painful things down into some dark corner where they try to forget about them.  That dark corner is actually right in our belly.  Our culture reinforces this process.  Even our spirituality and psychology frequently involves "getting over things" and letting things go.  But I think that just encourages the process of disconnection and dissociation (in the spiritual community it's called spiritual bypass).  The more we disconnect, the more upsetting things get when we get triggered

This results in a cycle of numbness/pain cycle.  At the far end of this is almost total emotional numbness.  Sometimes when I ask people how or what they feel they are genuinely puzzled, as if its an unanswerable question.  What's happening is the question itself is bringing up an uncomfortable feeling, which causes the numbness mechanisms to kick in.  

But this numbness will eventually make us sick.  Numbing is only the illusion of disconnection, because we can never really disconnect from our pain.  It's a living part of us that over time will rot and decay and cause all manner of sickness.  We can't really get over it or let it go, we can only go through it and allow spirit to transform it.  But going through it involves a real surrender, a real fear about what happens on the other side of letting go.  I used to push people more into that space, but I do that less.  I have a really deep respect for the darkness that lives inside of us and I don't want to push someone into that space if they're not really on board.  

So I called this blog post "from numbness to pain" but that's only part of the story.  When the pain and rot and decay begins transforming it actually becomes the earth from which something new and beautiful grows.  Each person has a unique growth, unique to their life circumstances and their purpose for life on this planet.  But its beautiful to watch that process happen.

On Empaths and Gurus

There's spectrum that humans exist on as it relates to our emotional life.  On one side are psychopaths. These are not the psychopaths that you're probably thinking of that you learned about from the movies--  the evil people who's existence is based on tormenting others.  The clinical definition of psychopathy is a low or even non-existent capability for internal emotions and empathy.  Its as if their emotional self is stunted or muted.  In its place is a cold rationality motivated solely by self- interest.   

On the other end of this spectrum are empaths-- people that not only feel their own emotions very strongly but pick up the emotions of others too.  By pick up, I mean that empaths can actually feel what others are feeling and process it inside themselves.  There's a lot of interesting research on mirror neurons for more on this.  If you’ve read anything about Kundalini Mediumship or have experienced it, you know that emotions are the key to the whole process of accessing our kundalini.  

What most people have learned to do in our society (starting at a young age) is try to shut down, disconnect from and judge their emotions.  This process is actually at the heart of addiction, as people try to shut out or block out the pain and suffering arising from past karma and traumatic experiences.  Kundalini Mediumship is about actually connecting to and diving into what we feel, allowing ourselves to experience the totality of our emotions.  The emotions that most people disconnect from are like the outer layer of an onion.  The fear, shame, hatred, self-loathing, all of these “negative” emotions that we try to push out or medicate away are not symptoms that we can get rid of.  In fact the more we push them away the worse they'll be when they come back.

From another perspective, these emotions are actually manifestations of our divine self trying to communicate with us.   Our emotional self is intricately connected to our spiritual core.  There is a transformative process that happens when we don’t try to change our feelings, but when we actually own them.  Paradoxically, by not trying to change or do anything other than be with them they will start to change on their own.  This is what’s at the heart of any meditation practice.  By being with our emotions and the stories that come with them we can actually journey into deeper layers of our emotional onion.  Our emotions and sensations will shift, peel away, maybe even return in a different form.  When we allow ourselves to really experience the full range of our emotions we will see that all emotions are a part of us, and at the same time not us.  And, for those of us that are empathic, we will feel a thread that connects us to everyone and everything else.  This is the true gift and curse of the empath-- to truly feel the depth of emotional interconnection which is really spiritual interconnection.  

I mentioned gurus in the title of this blog post-- so how does this relate?  Well the guru is described in ancient texts as someone who awakens our inner knowledge.  But a deeper ability of a true guru (as explained to me by Muktananda and Bhagavan Das) is to actually take in and transform their disciple’s karma.  Bhagavan Das told a story of his guru Neem Karoli Baba about this.  Neem Karoli had a lot of disciples, and a lot of people that just wanted to see or touch him, because his power was so radiant and people just wanted a taste of it.  Muktananda and his guru Nityananda were the same way.  All these gurus had a reputation for fits of anger, constantly yelling at people to go away!  

There is even a story Bhagavan Das told where a rich guy came to Neem Karoli’s temple and tried to donate money.  Neem Karoli told the rich guy to get out and take his money with him.  But the guy later snuck his money into the donation box and left the temple.  When Neem Karoli found it, he had one of his disciples track the guy down and return his money.  This sounds totally ridiculous to people in our society, right?  Someone tries to give you money and you devote a ton of time and resources trying to not to take it?  But let's look at it this way-- the rich guy was trying to buy his way out of his karma.  By giving money to Neem Karoli, he was giving away a part of his karma to him.  In every energetic exchange there is a karmic thread that binds the actors.  Its as if the universe keeps track of every bit of karma, and in the final karmic accounting the giving and receiving have to add up.  It's kind of like the spiritual version of Newton’s third law of thermodynamics-- for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.  There is no one-way transferrence of energy.  By giving money to Neem Karoli, an equal amount of his karma also had to be transferred to Neem Karoli.  At some level Neem Karoli decided that he would not accept the rich guy’s karma.  Maybe he thought the rich guy was an asshole or did not have a good heart and was self-centered.  As Bhagavan Das’ later said “this guru stuff is serious business” so don't play around with it.  I believe the same thing is true for empaths. On a certain level, by feeling and picking up others’ emotions, empaths are processing a part of others’ karma.  

There is also an interesting dynamic with empaths in that they frequently get tangled up with takers-- energy vampires, narcissists, and the aforementioned psychopaths.  So how do empaths navigate these areas?  Whats the lesson?

The lesson is to have clear and ferocious boundaries.  These boundaries are not walls that prevent us from empathy.  Some people try to build up a wall.  But you'll have to keep building and building this wall, because it will keep crashing.  Its not built on anything but a mental construct, and that takes a lot of work to keep up.  

Instead, the boundary is an intrinsic part of us based on our love of self and desire to keep ourselves spiritually healthy.  From this boundary comes a voice and a power that acknowledges the depth and seriousness of this work.  Empaths need to feel and understand others’ intentions very strongly.  We need to learn how to honor our own physical and energetic bodies and the process of karmic transference. And we need to be very clear when working with others' karma.  Just because we love someone very deeply does not mean we need to solve all their problems.  Empaths cannot be complacent, we can’t numb ourselves, we can’t check out.  We have to fully dive in and own our empathic nature.  We have to love very deeply, help people when the time is right and tell others to go away when its appropriate!  As deep as our feeling and our heart is-- that is as sharp as our claws and fangs need to be as long as we’re in a world that has deception, cruelty and hatred.

Kundalinimediumship.com is online!

This website has been over 20 years in the making.  My goal with this site is to provide a resource for people interested in kundalini awakening.  There is a lot of information (and misinformation!) about kundalini on the internet.  There are a lot of warnings, a lot of cautions, a lot of people saying it's a dangerous thing...

When I first experienced the kundalini energy as a teenager, it was a VERY destabilizing experience.  I had no resources, no one to talk to, no cultural knowledge I could rely on.  I felt very alone and very lost.

What happened was-- as a very young child I met a very evolved person named Baba Muktananda and received a kundalini transmission from him.  Nothing happened for about a decade, but then when I was a teenager, his energy hit me incredibly hard.  So many things came at me at once and I didn't know how to process them.  I reconnected with Muktananda's lineage (called Siddha Yoga) as a teen but had a lot of problems with it.  I then discovered the Afro-Brazilian tradition of capoeira, and then South American shamanism.  My devotion and dedication to learning the energies of those traditions, combined with my yogic practice provided the stability for me to engage with the kundalini in a productive way.

I started doing healing work in 2004.  Soon I realized that I was also a medium, or vessel, for the spirits that I had learned in my spiritual practices.  The healing practice of mediumship is something recognized in many parts of the world-- Latin America, and many parts of Africa and Asia in particular.  

I believe that we can all access the kundalini (and in fact many of you already have!) and I also believe we can be a medium for divine energy.  All it takes is a genuine commitment to working through our karma and trauma-- to reconnect to the parts of ourselves we've pushed away and disconnected from.

I also believe that this spiritual work is necessary for us as a species to navigate this incredibly difficult time on our planet.  The challenges we face are actually the call of the spirit world to re-engage with our own deep spiritual connection.  The spirits are using these difficulties to call us back home!

If you are having a problem navigating a kundalini awakening, please reach out.  You are not alone.

Thank you for taking the time to read this.