What it means to Keep up, and you will be kept up
Everybody who does kundalini yoga has heard the phrase “keep up and you will be kept up.” It’s a mantra that Yogi Bhajan repeated to remind people that the path to mastery takes persistence. Like most things The Master said, I have come to realize that something as simple as a phrase spoken by such a master has multiple layers of meaning.
Of course keep up means to do each kriya to the best of your ability, but we all have good and bad days so keep up also means just showing up and doing what you can. Keeping up means showing up to your sadhana and doing it as consistently and persistently as you can. Keep up also means going to class, because the group energy is another dynamic that we need. There’s multiplicity in the group. We’re all made up of electromagnetic fields of energy, and when we practice in a group, the effects are multiplied. Everyone in the room reaps the benefits. In that quantum energy field, you pick up things that you wouldn’t get from your personal Sadhana alone.
Like something the teacher says, seemingly casually, which turns out to be the answer you’ve been looking for. This isn’t just some coincidence. The sound current is a very integral part of Kundalini Yoga and an accomplished teacher’s sound alone affects each listener differently. The sacred sounds have many levels of information encoded into them and you pick up what you need based on what you are transmitting. So keep up means, personally and collectively.
But keep up also means something very scientific. Keep the Kundalini raised– keep your frequency at a higher level. Your electromagnetic field is a transmitter-receiver. You give and receive energy. So if you keep your Kundalini raised, which is actually a chemical reaction in your body– Then something magical happens. Your neuron voltage increases– meaning that your brains neurons start to fire more efficiently and frequently. This makes everything spin faster and more efficiently. Your aura expands and so do you.
How to get faith? Faith comes from the strength of the soul. It is beyond logic and reason. Faith is the anchor, faith is the nucleus. Up keep the keep up. Up keep the— Keep up. You will be kept up. Have faith. There are two legs on which The Universe walks, hope and faith. —Yogi Bhajan, 5/28/1979
When you do Kundalini Yoga the glandular system (a.k.a Endocrine System) is stimulated in a very targeted way. That changes the blood chemistry, which in turn stimulates the brain chemistry. It’s super simple. You are a living computer and the brain is like the CPU (computer processing unit.) So when you do Kundalini Yoga, the brain neurons take on a very beneficial pattern. The result is that you upgrade your system to a faster computer on the spot. So keeping up means keeping your neuron voltage elevated. This in turn raises your collective frequency. Meaning, that your aura increases– your overall energy increases… i.e., your energy goes up. Thus– Keep up and you will be kept up.
This is the ultimate control over feeling good or bad, being happy or depressed. It’s purely scientific– keep your kundalini raised by doing the kriya, pranayam and meditation. This will keep you up– happy, elevated and joyful, no matter what’s happening around you. It’s like keeping gas in the tank.
Finally, keep up means using that increased energy to steer your vehicle where you want to go. What you want to experience. Ultimately it’s all up to you. That’s the eternal trick we keep coming back to. It’s not happening to you, it’s happening through you. Keeping up means you now have the energy to make a choice of which thoughts you want to pursue, and which experience you want to have. When a thought or problem bubbles up in your mind, you can now rise above it and choose a better thought. You’ve kept up, you’ve got the nerve strength, the mental strength, to take a breath and choose a more positive thought. After all, energy follows thought. Think about that.
If you make a habit of this, if staying elevated becomes your habit, you can create a happy, radiant life for yourself. This is the multi-leveled essence of Keep up and you will be kept up.