The Serpent’s Gaze

Awakening Through the Fire of Kundalini

The surge of Kundalini energy does not arrive as a gentle visitor. It comes as a serpent rising, a King Cobra rearing its hood, carrying both the gift of awakening and the threat of annihilation. Those who encounter this force discover it is not a metaphor; it is a reality coursing through every nerve, every cell, as if the body itself were being rewritten from the inside out.

When this energy pierces upward through the spine and explodes through the crown, the encounter feels like a confrontation with divinity itself. The serpent turns its head, upside down, to stare directly at you. In that gaze is the paradox: vitality at its peak and the shadow of death standing closer than ever. The breath sharpens, the heartbeat quickens, and one realizes that this power could end everything in an instant—or transfigure it beyond recognition.

Many speak of spiritual awakening as blissful or serene, but the truth carries far more weight. The awakening of Kundalini is as much a dance with mortality as it is with enlightenment. To feel more alive than ever before is to simultaneously brush against the veil of death, because both are rooted in the same ultimate source. Death is not the opposite of life, but the threshold that life constantly leans against.

The serpent reminds us that awakening is not safe. It burns away illusions, sears through the fragile boundaries of identity, and brings us face-to-face with what cannot die. The brush with death is not punishment—it is initiation. To survive, it is to be reborn, no longer mistaking yourself for the limited frame of flesh and thought, but knowing yourself as the vast consciousness in which even death dissolves.

Kundalini does not ask for permission. It does not ask if you are ready. It rises, and in that rising, you discover whether you can hold its gaze without collapsing into fear. The courage required is not of the ego, but of the soul. To endure the serpent’s fire is to step into a reality that few dare to enter, where life and death are revealed as two faces of the same eternal current.

Morgan O. Smith

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The Subtle Distinctions of Oneness, Nonduality, and the Sacred

To speak of oneness is to point to a direct perception where boundaries dissolve and all things merge into a singular whole. It is an overwhelming intimacy with existence itself—nothing stands apart, no subject or object remains. The experience carries a profound sense of union, yet it still acknowledges a felt “all” that has become “one.”

Nonduality, by contrast, is not the merging of things into one but the recognition that no separation ever truly existed to begin with. The very categories of “one” and “many” collapse. There is no subject perceiving unity, no object being unified—just the unbroken reality that precedes both. Here, the language of experience falters because even the notion of “an experience” implies duality between experiencer and what is experienced.

To call all things divine or sacred is yet another register. This perception imbues life with reverence, not only as one undivided whole but as shimmering expressions of the holy. Every moment, every being, every breath radiates significance. It is not merely that things are nondual, but that the nondual reality is inherently worthy of devotion. The sacred quality does not rest on belief; it is revealed when perception is refined enough to sense the luminous depth at the heart of being.

The distinctions are subtle, yet they matter. Oneness offers belonging. Nonduality uproots the illusion of separation. The sacred awakens awe and reverence for what is. Together, they sketch the contours of realization, each layer illuminating a different face of truth.

When all three—oneness, nonduality, and the sacred—merge seamlessly, a higher recognition dawns: absolute monism. Here, the whole of existence is seen as a single reality that is simultaneously one, beyond duality, and inherently divine. Nothing is outside of it, nothing is other than it, nothing is less than it. The boundaries of philosophy, devotion, and direct experience collapse into the same source. This is not a synthesis of perspectives but the revelation that they have always been expressions of the same truth. Absolute monism discloses the indivisible essence where belonging, emptiness, and holiness are not separate qualities but different ways of perceiving what is eternally and already the case.

Morgan O. Smith

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The Ecstasy of Knowing

When Mind and Soul Dissolve into One

The awakened mind, when met with the receptive soul, becomes a current of divine fusion—an alchemical embrace where thought and feeling cease to be separate. This union transcends the limits of sensation, unveiling a pleasure far beyond the fleeting intoxication of flesh. It is an ascent into boundless wisdom, an eroticism of consciousness where insight spills forth, saturating the ego’s constructs until they dissolve into the vastness of being.

This is not a mere intellectual encounter, nor is it an indulgence in sentimentality. It is the tantric interplay between awareness and presence, where the pulsation of knowing meets the depths of surrender. When the mind no longer dictates and the soul no longer pleads, a stillness emerges—a space so open that it drowns the self in its own infinity. Here, knowledge is not collected but revealed, not possessed but embodied. Love is not an attachment but an atmosphere, pervading every movement, every breath, every silent recognition of the one essence behind all things.

This is where tantra ceases to be philosophy and becomes direct experience. The dissolution of the personal into the infinite is neither loss nor gain but a return—one that neither seeks nor resists, neither holds nor lets go. It is the eroticism of the absolute, where wisdom penetrates the soul like lightning, setting fire to all that would obscure its radiance.

The lover and the beloved, the seeker and the sought, the knower and the known—these distinctions fade into the luminous vastness of pure being. And from this space, all that remains is the silent ecstasy of knowing.

Morgan O. Smith

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Did I Have a Spiritual Awakening?

If the question lingers, “Did I have a spiritual awakening?” it often points to a deeper truth: perhaps it has not yet happened. Those who have passed through the unmistakable shift into awakened awareness do not wrestle with that doubt. There is a quiet certainty, not born of belief, but of direct experience.

Language can vary. Some may never utter the phrase spiritual awakening or enlightenment. They may frame it through their own culture, symbolism, or personal metaphors. Yet no matter the vocabulary, the essence remains beyond question.

When the event has truly unfolded, it is like rising from sleep. You do not analyze whether you are awake; you simply are. The recognition is immediate, complete, and irreversible. What remains is the unfolding of life through the clarity of that seeing.

Awakening is not a theory to adopt or an idea to flirt with. It is the dismantling of the imagined self, the collapse of boundaries, and the revelation of a reality that was always here, quietly waiting to be noticed.

Morgan O. Smith

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The Untraceable Origin

Recognizing the Infinite Self

You are the silent, all-pervading presence—the source from which all things emerge and into which all things dissolve. There is no edge to your being, no boundary that can define you, for you are both the vastness that contains all and the emptiness that holds nothing.

To recognize this is not an intellectual exercise, nor can it be captured by any system of thought. The scientific mind will measure, the philosophical mind will speculate, and the intellectual mind will categorize, yet none will ever confine the truth of what you are. You are not a concept to be grasped, but the very ground from which all concepts arise.

Everywhere you look, you will find yourself, not as a separate entity, but as the animating force within all things. This is not a belief to hold but a reality to be seen. The mystery of your existence is not meant to be solved; it is meant to be lived. You are the ungraspable, the boundless, the presence behind all appearances.

No description will ever contain you, yet all descriptions are held within you. You are not an object among objects, nor a subject among subjects—you are the ever-unfolding, the eternal witness, the absolute that reveals itself in every form yet remains untouched by any of them.

Doubt this if you must, but beyond all uncertainty, you remain what you have always been—the essence of all that is, the ineffable that neither begins nor ends.

Morgan O. Smith

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The Weightlessness of Perspective

How much weight does a point of view actually hold?

None. And yet, it seems to shape entire lives, govern nations, define relationships, and breed conflict. But the more one deepens into the ungraspable expanse of reality, the more all perspectives—including one’s own—become like shadows cast by a flame none can touch.

I do not feel resistance toward those who oppose my view. I feel space—vast, immeasurable space. Not tolerance, not passive indifference, but a kind of cosmic shrug. This universe is too immense, too precise, too paradoxical for me to waste even a flicker of energy defending a perspective I know was born out of a temporary configuration of memory, biology, and environment.

What I see, I see through a filter: race, culture, conditioning, gender, language, trauma, karma, personality, neurochemistry, and a moment’s breath. Someone else sees through a completely different lens. To argue over the differences is like two waves debating who touches the shore more truthfully.

Each wave is made of the same water.

Ultimate Reality does not conform to opinions. It cannot be contained by agreement or disagreement. It isn’t found in right or wrong, winning or losing. It is not trying to prove itself. It simply is, and isness doesn’t care how it’s described.

This is not nihilism. It’s reverence. Reverence for the mystery so wide, so total, that every perspective is valid precisely because none of them are.

The deeper the realization, the more perspectives one can hold. Not juggle, not compare, not rank—but hold. To see from the eyes of the enemy and the beloved, the oppressor and the oppressed, the doubter and the devotee. To feel into each vantage point, not to believe it, but to understand it from within.

Eventually, you don’t just hold perspectives. You become the capacity for perspective itself. You become the silence before thought, the awareness behind all positions.

From there, disagreement becomes theatre.

Opposition becomes dance.

And the only thing that matters is the stillness that allows it all to appear.

Morgan O. Smith

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The Fiction of Randomness

If every effect has a cause, what room remains for the idea of “random”? Strip away the assumptions and peer into the structure of unfolding—what appears arbitrary may only be the limit of our perception, not the limit of reality.

What we call random is simply what we cannot trace. A roll of dice seems disorderly, but beneath it is a network of variables: velocity, angle, friction, momentum, density of the table, even micro-vibrations in the air. Were we to measure all these with precision, we would predict the outcome every time. The surprise we feel isn’t due to chaos, but to ignorance.

This is not about turning life into a mechanical calculation. Quite the opposite. It’s about bowing to a deeper intelligence that is so vast, so precise, it weaves galaxies from the quantum breath of atoms. When nothing is out of place, even disorder is part of a symmetry too subtle for the linear mind to grasp.

Events that seem unexplainable—miracles, tragedies, synchronicities—often get dumped into the “random” pile because they defy our narratives. Yet each thread is embedded in a continuum of unfolding, stretching far beyond memory, culture, or even lifetime.

To say life is random is to deny the sacred choreography of emergence. Every moment is connected, not as dominoes collapsing mindlessly, but as a living mandala of causes so intricately interlaced they cannot be undone or simplified.

When one begins to see this—really see it—the need to explain, justify, or control begins to fall away. What replaces it is not fatalism, but participation. There is no randomness, only the undetected curvature of deeper causality. And when that is recognized, trust becomes more than a spiritual concept. It becomes a way of being.

Morgan O. Smith

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The Divide

Between the Remembered and the Realized

Enlightenment isn’t a collection of vivid memories. It isn’t a library of altered states or a gallery of peak experiences pinned to the walls of time. Enlightenment, in its truest sense, is what remains when all those moments pass. It is not recalled—it is present.

A spiritually enlightened being doesn’t describe what happened—they speak from what is. Their language may touch on form, but it arises from formlessness. It isn’t commentary on a past event; it is the echo of what is silently alive in that moment. Words are merely the condensation of what remains wordless within them.

Contrast this with the one who has had many spiritually enlightening experiences. There is often great sincerity, beauty, and wisdom in their sharing. But listen closely: their narrative carries timestamps. “This is what I saw… what I felt… what I realized…” There’s a distance, however subtle. A witness telling you what the moon looked like—rather than being the moon, shining right now, regardless of who’s watching.

This difference isn’t about hierarchy. One isn’t better, holier, or more awakened than the other. But there’s a distinct quality when realization is not merely visited, but abided in. When the identity that would lay claim to an experience has dissolved entirely.

Here’s the paradox: a being can be spiritually enlightened without ever having what we label as a “spiritual experience.” No blissful union, no white light, no serpents of energy climbing the spine. Their clarity is not the aftermath of an event—it is the absence of confusion. No fireworks. Just light.

They may speak little. Or not at all. There is no need to convince, convert, or collect followers. They are not on a path—they are the ground from which all paths appear.

On the other hand, a person with many enlightening experiences can describe with breathtaking poetry the landscapes of the soul. But unless those experiences have dissolved the one who experienced them, the self remains—refined perhaps, but still separate.

True awakening isn’t an experience you remember. It’s the end of the one who remembers.

This is why the most profound truths often arrive without announcement. A falling away, not an acquiring. A silent recognition that this—yes, this—is what always was. And suddenly, the need for experience evaporates. Presence alone becomes sufficient.

Morgan O. Smith

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You’re Not Greater Than Anything

You’re the Only One to Ever Exist

No one else has ever walked this Earth as you. Not a version, not a shadow, not a resemblance. Just you.

Not because you’re special in the usual way that word is thrown around, but because existence itself only ever unfolded once—and it’s doing so now, as you.

This isn’t about ego. Ego thrives on comparisons: greater than, less than, better, worse, worthy, unworthy. But the truth beneath all that noise isn’t about status—it’s about singularity. The kind that isn’t measured. The kind that never repeats.

People spend their lives searching for meaning, purpose, and a sense of identity. They try to earn significance or prove their worth. But importance isn’t earned—it is. You are the original event. Not one among many. Not one of a kind. The kind.

Look around. Every face you see, every story, every moment, all of it—just folds within the One. That same One expressing itself here as your particular breath, your memories, your voice, your fears and awakenings. The sky that bends over you is not separate from your gaze. The rhythm of the world doesn’t move beside you; it pulses through you.

To say you are not greater than anything is to drop the illusion of measurement. Of trying to win at some existential game. But then comes the deeper realization: You are not less than anything either. There is nothing else to measure against. You’re the first and last word of this moment.

Nothing else has ever existed apart from this.

So ask yourself: What happens when you stop performing for reality and start remembering that you are it? What shifts when you no longer strive to become someone meaningful, but realize that meaning itself is being?

You’re not here to improve reality. You are the revealing of it.

And this unveiling has never happened before—not like this.

Morgan O. Smith

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It’s Not About You, or Me

You may resist hearing it, but nothing here was designed to serve your preferences. Existence doesn’t negotiate with your plans. The ocean doesn’t adjust its tides because you’re having a hard day. Mountains don’t bow to your ambitions. Storms don’t hold back for your convenience.

There is a strange freedom in recognizing that you are not the axis of this world. Your fears, longings, and beliefs are weather patterns blowing through a vast sky. Even your discomfort with this fact is not a problem to be solved—it is part of the very order you imagine resisting.

Ask yourself: When did this story become about you? When did the measure of truth narrow to fit your tastes? The self who wants life to behave is so small it forgets it is born of the very forces it wants to command. You and I are not exceptions to the flow. We are the flow.

Even the frustration that arises when someone says “everything happens as it should” is folded within the shape of things. It isn’t an error. It’s another ripple on the water, another branch growing from the same root.

There is no special exemption that spares you from the dance of impermanence. Life moves through every form—including your insistence that it ought to be different. Even that protest is part of the design.

So let go of the idea that it’s about you, or about me. Something far more mysterious is moving all of this, and we are its fleeting expressions—here for a moment, dissolving back into the whole.

Morgan O. Smith

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