Hi Christi, and welcome!
What a great discussion here. You have been raising some excellent questions and I think you have gotten a lot of good feedback.
The goal in the AYP lessons is to give folks a good appreciation of premature crown opening and its consequences. Most of the kundalini horror stories written over the past 40 years (at least) are related to this. On the other hand, in the lessons, no one is prohibited from exploring their own nature, and the lessons attempt to keep that door open while observing reasonable safety. So those are the two principles that crown discussions are wrapped around in the lessons. I think with a measured approach, we are finally moving beyond the kinds of unwieldy kundalini scenarios that were so prevalent in the past, to something that is much more manageable. It is, after all, our own nature that is manifesting. So we ought to be able to come to terms with it and move forward with reasonable speed and safety. And we can -- fairly gracefully too!
There is really no "formula" practice for the crown that can be recommended whole-heartedly, because each person has a unique matrix of obstructions to be dissolved, and focused crown practices of any kind will not be stable until the matrix is largely dissolved, which can be done with the brow to root oriented practices already given. Going to the crown is then left up to the aspirant, and the suggestion is to wait to do it until ecstatic conductivity is sufficiently advanced so there can be a good awareness of what is happening. That is why prudent "testing" is recommended. And always keep in mind the time delays that are involved in the cycles of ecstasy and letdown.
It is important to note that energy experiences in the crown area (usually mirrored body-wide) are caused by "friction" from remaining impurities in the nervous system. So the energy symptoms themselves can be taken as a caution that there is more work to be done. With crown focus, energy symptoms can quickly turn into roller coaster emotions and all sorts of physical weirdness. Yes, all of this does stabilize later on, but the difficulty of the ride we take is directly related to how aggressive we have been at the crown early on. And it is not necessarily a shorter ride -- it can be much longer due to having to come off a stable routine of practices to deal with the energy dislocations. So, slow and steady (brow to root) will win this race 9 times out of 10.
The best crown experiences are the ones that have gone to dissolution into pure bliss consciousness, without negative after-effects. This indicates body-wide purity. As with all practice, we know it is good if we feel good in regular daily activity.
Once we get to that stage, then what? Well, nothing much really. We just keep going with our stable practice routine (using prudent self-pacing), and our regular life. Contrary to popular belief, there is no place other than
here that we have to go to (as Katrine says, just "stay home") -- no exit via the crown to some other exotic dimension. Actually, the opposite happens -- the ecstatic bliss (the exotic) comes in here from out there. That is the thing, you know -- the divine process is not us going somewhere else. It is the divine coming in through us into this life -- this ordinary life. It ends up melting our heart in an extraordinary way and flowing out through our actions. I call it outpouring divine love. That's it...
The crown is a sort of crossroad in all of this, one that takes a long time to purify completely, because to do so, everything else has to be purified, and that cannot be done overnight, no matter what has been promised. The good news is that all the purification we achieve in the sushumna (spinal nerve) and throughout the nervous system with our daily deep meditation, spinal breathing pranayama and other practices is crown opening by proxy. When everything is purified and opened, the crown is open too. In that sense all the practices we do are crown practices. We are just being cagey about it to avoid unnecessary mishaps.
Well, just some food for thought.
All the best!
The guru is in you.