Is PKYC right for me?

When asked (through interviews conducted and thematicized in 1998) what brought them to seek guidance from PKYC, participants responded that they had felt a deep underlying yearning, a sense of being somehow different from others, unusual inner feelings, and a desire to improve their spiritual life. Some participants reported unusual experiences and odd or nagging discomforts. One of the initial benefits they reported is a sense of grounding and relief based on the explanation they received about the reasons for their previous experiences. With a theoretical frame and a terminology to hold their experience, they could understand it and facilitate it more effectively. Having their experience validated, they were relieved of a fear of appearing strange or feeling like a misfit. After receiving guidance, practicing their recommendations, and gaining improvement in their process, they reported a variety of life improvements in the areas of emotional well-being, relationships, physical and health experiences, and spiritual life. The first shift they noted usually involved a feeling of increased mental stability, calm centerdness, and objectivity. Their improvements were experienced along with a period of inner unloading and renovation that required awareness, objectivity, spiritual practice, and guidance.

A person need not have experienced some of the commonly listed signs of a Kundalini rising in order to actually be in a process of spiritual (Kundalini) development and thus benefit from the services of PKYC. Many PKYC consultees came with risings that do not yield remarkable side effects, yet they had a deep spiritual yearning and wanted to deepen their spiritual life. Other people came with risings that yield some remarkable, unsettling, or difficult effects along with a spiritual yearning, and they also benefited from receiving spiritual direction from PKYC. PKYC is also available to some dedicated seekers who do not have a rising but who want to awaken their spiritual potential safely and direct it efficiently.

Anyone can have an assessment of their Kundalini process and not pursue the services of PKYC any further. Those who are interested in applying for the PKYC Recommendation Service (which involves receiving individual practices during a retreat) are requested to consider their comfort with the PKYC format by reviewing the basic criteria for participation in the Intervention phase of our service. If there are any questions or concerns regarding the following items, we will be happy to address them.

PKYC is ideally suited to help people who have a spiritual yearning, some sense of faith, and/or a loving, respectful concept of the Divine or One. They are thus able to tap this feeling to muster patience, understanding, endurance, cooperation, and dedication for a serious spiritual endeavor. Therefore, all applicants to the PKYC Intervention phase must have a spiritual outlook on life. They should have as their primary focus the sincere dedication to improve their spiritual life and the motivation and ability and will to seriously engage in a program to work toward this goal.

Applicants should have sufficient physical well being, emotional maturity/stability, and energy to engage in the program safely, comfortably, responsibly, and effectively. They should also have a stable enough life situation and the support of their primary other/s for their participation in PKYC. Prospective participants should also have the ability to make appropriate monetary offerings for PKYC services without unduly straining their financial needs. Participants should have the willingness to develop and maintain a healthy, spiritual lifestyle (which may entail some self-changes). An intention to cultivate spiritual qualities, values, virtues, and efforts and to live a healthy, wholesome, principled, and spiritual lifestyle that limits dissipating and toxifying behaviors is an essential counterpart to the services of PKYC, for without these qualities, the recommendations of PKYC will not yield their full, hoped for result.

Openness to new concepts, new terms, and to an adjunct paradigm or worldview is helpful to those who choose to participate in PKYC. For example, a consultee should feel open to exploring such concepts as reincarnation, karma, synchronicity, subtle body, subtle realm, spiritual adepts (saints, sages), and Kundalini Shakti (Holy Spirit) as the Divine within. Consultees should be willing to examine their individual process from the theoretical framework of TKS while keeping their own spiritual perspective.

By participating in PKYC, one is not taking on a guru, lineage, initiation, or path or joining a group or organization. Being a PKYC consultee does not require one to change or quit one’s religion or to become a yogi, ascetic, disciple, or vegetarian. People in urgent crisis or emergency or those pursuing services primarily to escape pain or distress or to improve special abilities or professional skills are not appropriate candidates for PKYC services. PKYC does not use healing, psychic, energy, magical, or astral interventions or make life-planning or health care decisions for consultees. We do use prayer and other spiritual methods.

Applicants to the PKYC Recommendation service should be able to travel to Tennessee to attend a two-week intensive spiritual guidance retreat to receive personal instruction in their individual recommendations. They should be willing and able to wait for retreat availability. Consultees must be willing and able to do regular spiritual practices, which usually include suitable postures, breathing, meditation, Ayurvedic supplements, nutrition, study, and lifestyle considerations as appropriate to the individual. These methods are carefully chosen to be compatible with the particular needs and spiritual orientation of each consultee.

The PKYC spiritual guidance retreat/training is designed to provide a safe and effective container for focused spiritual work. Consultees are expected to adapt to its structure, format, framework, and gentle disciplines. The role of the consultee is that of a student and includes the ability to: accept the role of an advisee cooperatively and respectfully; comply with the traditional style of the PKYC program and retreat; listen to instruction and accept guidance attentively and responsively; interact with respect, honesty, receptivity, and gentleness; communicate personal spiritual questions, experiences, and concerns to the director; cultivate spiritual qualities, values, virtues, and efforts; live a healthy, ethical, and spiritual lifestyle to support spiritual process; practice the recommendations offered to the best of one’s ability; and pursue the regular consultations of the follow-up phase. Participants should have an affinity for discipline, quiet, discretion, respect, and privacy.

All consultees should be willing to abstain from activities that might unduly dissipate or toxify the subtle body system as understood in the theoretical frame of TKS. Behaviors that are considered to impede the ability of the subtle body to support progress to the spiritual goal are counter to the purpose of the PKYC recommendations. Due to their effect on the subtle body system, some lifestyle factors such as poor nutrition, unstable or overly stressful life situation, ongoing overwork, strong emotional venting, substance abuse, certain sexual practices, overly dissipating one’s vitality, and certain esoteric techniques may be incompatible with the purpose of the PKYC recommendations and render them ineffective or counterproductive. Participants are therefore expected to refrain from such contraindicated behaviors or to discuss the possibility of foregoing their participation in PKYC until they feel they can participate more fully. PKYC reserves the right to not accept applicants who engage in behaviors that would inhibit their ability to progress fully according to the theoretical frame of TKS. While under the guidance of PKYC, consultees should also be willing to forego whatever alternative interventions may have been deemed incompatible to the focus of the service. These may include some particular or intense forms of breath and energy work, psychic or occult training, practices, and treatments, strong primal interventions, some sexual practices, and unprescribed drugs (including psychedelics and entheogens). TKS is a sattvic right path lineage and does not use or support the use of techniques such as these.

Consultees are expected to do no interventions that feel harmful to them, that overly strain them, or that they do not feel intuitively good about. They should have the motivation to follow up with the recommended lifestyle and with regular spiritual practices (for about an hour each day at home when possible). They are to keep a log to monitor the effects of their recommendations. Before participating in a PKYC retreat, applicants should have the sincere and honest intention to engage in the follow up spiritual direction consultation sessions of the Support phase. By reporting regularly regarding their progress and experiences they will receive individual spiritual education and guidance that will provide needed support during the unloading project of the Renovation/ Restoration (R&R) phase that follows reaching Makara point in Upper Ajna (Brow) chakra.

Consultees should work to develop the ability to cultivate awareness, objectivity, stability, patience, responsibility, and faith during the transformative inner process that will be taking place in the Intervention and Support phases. Some experiences that occur in the R&R phase as Kundalini Shakti directs the vayus to purge and purify the subtle system from her more lofty control center at Makara may appear similar to physical or emotional symptoms. It is the consultee’s responsibility to determine their own health care and life decisions. They are to accept personal responsibility for their medical and psychological care and well-being and for making personal decisions regarding life choices. They must understand that PKYC does not provide medical, health care, or psychological services.

Ayurvedic dietary supplements are recommended by PKYC to vitalize and purify the subtle body chakra system to support spiritual process. PKYC does not offer an Ayurvedic health care service. Ayurvedic supplements are made available to support the consultee’s subtle energy system for the purpose of spiritual growth. They are not medications, are not meant to treat, cure, or prevent any disease, and have not been approved by the FDA. Participants are not required to use the dietary supplements but may choose to do so at their own discretion. They are encouraged to seek health care wherever they choose and to keep PKYC informed of their health situation.

PKYC is a spiritual guidance service designed to support the consultee’s spiritual development. Not all applicants who receive an assessment choose to proceed on to the Intervention phase of PKYC to receive recommendations in a retreat, and not all who might like to attend a retreat can be accepted by PKYC. PKYC is not an educational or training program for practitioners, therapists, teachers, or writers. Consultees should not seek the services of PKYC for the purpose of gaining intellectual instruction, methodological training, professional development, or skill enhancement. Those whose primary motivation is relief from uncomfortable symptoms rather than spiritual development may find a health related service more appropriate to their needs. PKYC is not able to serve as a crisis intervention resource for new severe cases in acute “spiritual emergency.” We are not capable of serving people who are too emotionally or physically debilitated to follow our program, whose life situation is too unstable to support a spiritual lifestyle, or whose behavior choices may dissipate their subtle system to the extent that their spiritual advancement may be limited, according to TKS. Following the Assessment phase, all PKYC participants sign a waiver indicating that they understand the conditions and limitations described in this section before proceeding on to the Intervention phase.

The world’s great spiritual traditions provide many effective methods to improve a person’s spiritual life and Kundalini process. Whether you choose to supplement your spiritual endeavor with PKYC services or not, we lovingly affirm you in your efforts to improve your spiritual life by using prayer and the ways of your selected spiritual perspective. If we do not seem to be the right choice for you, we offer you blessings in your continued search for compatible qualified help and convey our firm belief that Divine assistance is always available.