Decades ago, I experienced something that stands out amongst all my human experiences.

I was alone at dusk, listening to beautiful singing and suddenly out of the corner of my eye, noticing a lightning storm in the distant mountains.

Everything in me wanted to pay complete attention to this experience, to be as present and attentive as possible.

And as soon as I set that intent and tuned in to the sounds and sights, something very unexpected and unusual happened.

I felt a strong energy enter my body, piercing me from the top of my head to the bottom of my torso. Crown to root.

The energy was forceful but not painful. I didn’t see it with my eyes but had a sense that it was white.

It was forceful like lightning, yet soft. It felt like it made a bigger, clearer channel. It had a huge amount of what I now know is potency, or life-force energy. It was a supercharging experience.

And as soon as it reached my root chakra, it left, leaving me in shock, wondering what the fuck just happened. I’d never experienced anything remotely like that before.

I didn’t know anyone at that time in my life to talk to about this experience who wouldn’t have thought I was crazy, so I kept it to myself. It seemed like a very freaky experience. I wondered if I was crazy. It was too real to have imagined it.

Is my focused attention really that powerful? Did I draw it to me somehow? Who needs an experience like that? Well, apparently I did.

I saved my ticket stub to the Santa Fe Opera where this experience had occurred, on a night with singers trying out for opera directors and hardly anyone in attendance.

I later came to consider it my energy awakening.

Years later, it occurred to me that it may have been related to me starting a practice of hatha yoga a year or so before the event.

I then began to think of it as being zapped by Source, and I was feeling a little self-satisfied that even though I started learning hatha yoga from a book, rather than from an in-person or even a TV teacher, I must have been doing something right for this to happen.

Even now, decades later, I am convinced that the purpose of doing asanas is to open the energy channels, one step on the way to samadhi.

Later, after learning a bit about kundalini yoga, I wondered if what I had experienced was a spontaneous kundalini descending. I believe it was. I’ve never practiced much kundalini yoga — been to a few classes in recent years but was never regular with it.

It seems that kundalini rising (from root to crown) is a goal in kundalini yoga.

No one mentions kundalini descending. Same energy channel, opposite direction. Why would one direction be favored and the other not? I don’t know.

My crown chakra is often open, and I wonder if that zapping left me with a more open sahasrara chakra.

Later I learned about shaktipat, which as far as I understand is an energy transfer a guru gives to initiate a student into his school of teachings — with the student’s agreement and consent.

As I understand it, shaktipat is a third-eye zapping. But I had no guru. What instigated that experience?

A little over a year ago, I experienced once again being pierced by energy, this time in my third-eye chakra. I actually saw the nearly-transparent energy coalescing in front of my face before it suddenly zapped my third eye/ajna chakra, going into the middle of my brain.

This time, I was with someone I’d just met that day. I don’t know if he gave me shaktipat without my consent or if it was spontaneous for both of us, or even if I somehow unintentionally gave myself or us both a shaktipat-like experience.

I was simply too stunned to say anything, and I have no idea what his experience was.

If I knew how to give someone shaktipat, I would never do it without actually being a guru (not very likely), asking if they wanted to receive it, and only giving it if they gave their explicit consent to receive it.

It is shocking and invasive, not something to mess around with, although the benefit seems to be a clearing out of stagnant energy and strengthening the energy channel it penetrates.

It feels really fucked up to give it to someone without their consent. What kind of person would do that to someone they barely knew? If he did it on purpose, had he spent too much time in the nondual world to know how to interact responsibly and mindfully in the world of duality? Or did he think he was my guru?

The experience was not sexual, but there was definitely an energetic penetration of personal boundaries.

Whatever amount of clearing out my ajna chakra may have occurred from that experience simply wasn’t worth it. My intuition was already pretty strong.

And then again, what if it was spontaneous for both of us? I’ve talked to a mentor who believes that free-range potency exists and that perhaps it was karmic.

In a way, it reminded me of the proverbial romantic spark between two people, certainly igniting an interest, except much more powerful than I ever imagined it to be. But it didn’t feel romantic. It was literally shocking. And yet, I felt curious about this other person and also would like to know what his experience was. He was not someone available for a romantic relationship, even if I felt comfortable with it.

He is actually a pretty cool guy, someone I want to like and trust…and I set a boundary I feel good about for now. Respect and mindfulness are important, as are focusing on our mutual roles and tasks at hand.

Trust can possibly be rebuilt, or actually, built in the first place, but only with accountability, respect, and honesty.

That’s going to be some worthwhile conversation, if it happens.