Meditation

[Federica]

Thank you Federica.

In my meditation today I had reached a point where my body feels very paralyzed, almost like it will dissappear when I go further. Before that I saw colors (mixture of yellow and green) moving in a certain pattern.

The problem is to stay calm in those moments, it really difficult, because my heart beats faster and fear comes with that. It comes automatically.

Do you can relate to the above, in your own meditation practice?

I can relate to the fear, not to the rest of what you describe. I am definitely at a more beginner level. Also for me it's a sort of cold fear. No fast heart beats, only a kind of general mood of apprehension, a heaviness. Sometimes I have seen some unknown scary characters.

I'm certainly at a beginner level too.
I can't go pass the state of colorfull "blackness".
It takes 15-25 minutes to get to this state for me, if I even get there.

The thing is that I meditated a couple years ago in an other way (by focusing on soemmething or my breathing) and could get to this point too.

What are the scary characters you see?

Güney,

How do you know that 15-25 minutes have passed, do you keep a clock in check during your meditation?
I am curious because I have no ability to estimate how much time is going by. By the way I only do it when I have no obligations coming up for hours, otherwise I would be distracted by the upcoming events and their preparation.
Other than that, I am doing concentration on a man-made object everyday. I set a timer, I've just gone up to 9 minutes.
On the appearance of characters, I think it's particular to me, so I hope nobody will feel doubtful or hesitant to engage in thinking exercises for this reason. Now this will surely sound ridiculous. However, one 'character' that I remember is a sort of very energetic and active, vaguely threatening, green figure, similar to a man. I saw it at two occasions unless it was not the same figure, I am not entirely sure. Things like that. Again, I understand these impressions are personal stuff, so I hope nobody reading here will expect or dread similar things.

[Cleric]

Thank you cleric!

I thought about how we talked a couple times about the loosening of the etheric body from the physical, and tried to couple it with the experience I had while meditating.
The "going sleeping" of the physical body gives me in no way the experience of loosening the etheric body.

I have a new sensation and link it with the concept that I got from here.
To me it is very superficial, because I want to come myself to the conclusion of loosening the etheric body.
For me it's only "going sleeping" of the body.

You are correct. As a whole, the sensation is completely sensory. The important thing is that through such sensations we become more aware of our bodily volume. Normally we don't pay much attention to our body parts except when they are stimulated or in pain. This can be done in the reverse direction. When we meditate we may try to fill, for example, our leg with our attention (assuming that our leg is currently in neutral state, no tingling, etc.). Normally it's natural for us to focus on a point. For example, it is relatively easy to focus on the tip of our toe. But to focus on the whole leg it's as if this focus has to bifurcate and fill the whole volume of the leg. Since our cognitive habits are quite linear (sequential) it's likely that we feel this filling as if our focus moves very quickly, randomly poking and producing sparks of attention.

If we try to do this, we'll see that in a certain sense our trying to fill our leg with attention reminds us of the tingling sensations. Or otherwise stated, in order to fill our leg with attention, the easiest thing is to vividly remember the tingling sensations we once experienced. Because think about it - if we have never had any sensations in our leg it would quite incomprehensible if someone asked us to fill it with attention. It's like if I ask you to fill with your attention the cubic meter of air in front of you. We can do that by imagining that we probe it with our visual ray or with our hands (which we can also do for our leg) but normally we can't conceive what it could be to feel that cube from within, as we feel our leg.

So for such reasons, the physical sensations are like orthopedic braces that entrain our intuitive activity in certain shapes. Once we're familiar with them we can perform similar gestures through our own effort. So the etheric is neither the physical tingling, nor even the remembered. Yet we gradually become conscious of it as we get to know the degrees of freedom of our spiritual activity. This is also why Steiner felt that some aspects of projective geometry can be used as metaphors.



Notice how there's no actual circle above. It's all lines (by the way, this is similar to the way we never find what fractals are ‘made of’, we only have relations of the unknown). In a similar sense, our momentary perceptual states of being can be thought of as constrained by ideal lines. They can't be seen as some additional perception but our intuitive being moves through them and understands their ideal relations, just like our mathematical thoughts move through such ideal constraints.

So when we see things in this way, we shouldn't expect to find the supersensible as some additional tingling sensation. You are completely right that this would be superficial! What counts, though, is that the tingling sensation entrains the focus of our thinking ray, which spreads out and fills the whole volume of the leg. This teaches us new degrees of freedom through which we can repeat that focusing action.

As a whole, the difficulty with these 'bodies' comes from the fact that our conceptions are dominated by the visual sense. When we think of a physical body we imagine space and human figure inside it. But in phenomenological sense the physical body is the totality of our sensory experiences. Thus knowing the physical body is really its experience from within. If we keep this firmly in mind then when we speak of other bodies we won't be tempted to fantasize the bodies from the side. We easily forget that if we knew the physical body only as a third-person picture, then all talks about smell, sound, sensation for bodily space and so on, would sound completely 'occult'. Thus what makes body a body is the inner experience. It's the same with the etheric. We only know it if we approach the corresponding inner experiences and not when we expect to see something.

As an example, imagine how by moving your arms in all possible ways you can sweep the volume of space reachable by your fingers. It would look something like a half-sphere in front of you and as something squished behind, since we can't reach much of the space behind our back. We have intuition of space only because we can sweep it in this way. Analogously, we can sweep the 'volume' of all thoughts and memories that we can reach. Just like our intuition of space serves as the intuitive context that integrates our spatial sensations together, so the inner experience of the etheric body manifests as the intuition that glues together the degrees of freedom of our spiritual activity (mainly thinking and remembering).

When we focus on our leg we can attain to a more holistic feeling of its volume but in the end it feels like, well, the inner sensation of a leg (what you call superficial). Things are different, however, when our concentration is in the head. Why? Because a head feels differently than a leg. The tingling sensations in the head are thoughts. Thus when we concentrate and gradually begin to feel the periphery as harmoniously integrated with our focus point, it feels not simply as tactile sensation in the head interior but like more panoramic experience of our thought life (remember the example with the IFS probing). We've often mentioned that when we reach this stage we're prone to build all kinds of idealistic theories that derive the World from a single principle (like Cosmin on the other thread). This only reflects the fact that we have reached the point to encompass our thinking life as a fractal but when we're not particularly aware of this we simply project that fractal on the World. However, when we're conscious of what is happening and the process goes even further, we're no longer fixated on our mind fractal but realize that it also metamorphoses within the greater context of our life. Thus we reach the experience of the life panorama.

So in a nutshell, just pay attention to all the different things you can do with your thinking activity. All the things you can think of and remember, all the ways you can fill your bodily parts with attention. When these things are performed we have concrete experiences, like the circle above. But hidden behind them are all the ideal lines that make this possible. So to see the etheric is really to become more and more intuitively aware of all these ideal constraints within which our spiritual activity manifests. When these possible thinking gestures are probed to sufficient degree, the holistic intuition of the thus integrated 'palette' becomes our consciousness within the etheric.

As someone with meditation practice, you certainly have experienced colors in the loosening state, am I right?

Di the colors have significance, or should I still try to not focus on anything else?

Yes, everything has significance, in the sense that there's nothing truly arbitrary in existence. We shouldn't close our eyes to the inner phenomena that necessarily begins to bubble as the etheric head-space opens. However, we should resist the temptation to immediately begin analyzing these new sensations. The deeper origin of color can be known later, when we begin to gain consciousness of the astral body (the colors are really connected with the different planetary spheres and the Elohim). However, just like breathing, we don't have to wait until we get there in order to work with color. As a matter of fact, working with the color rays (“... which are the seven Spirits of God sent forth into all the earth”) is one of the most important methods that Beinsa Duno has given. There's English translation here. It consists of Biblical verses arranged in a special way such that they focus on certain virtues, and these virtues are experienced in the higher worlds as specific hues. This has been long known and it is customary for instinctive clairvoyants to speak of colors in the aura which correspond to their soul qualities. Here however, just like in breathing, the goal today is to have fully conscious experience of color. In other words, the focus is in the spiritual essence, the Divine virtues, while the experience of inner color is the support. I would recommend to read first the second part, where explanations are given (starting at the chapter ‘THE METHOD OF THE COLOR RAYS OF LIGHT`).

My third question is, when should I stop concentrating on the "mantram" ?

Concentration never stops. This is what I tried to explain with the 'splitting the moment'. The verbal pronunciation of a formula naturally subsides after a while but not because we say "enough, let's do something else now" but because we have gone even deeper towards our spiritual core. Now the part of our being which lives in the verbal forms feels as surrounding environment.

As a comparison, we know how in life we often say something without thinking too much, words just pop out. Then we usually regret what we've said because it has been propelled by emotional impulse. This could have been avoided if we had more conscious experience of our inner being (remember the Tetris analogy that Ashvin recently reshared). In a similar way, when we concentrate, we should have the attitude that even this state is superficial in relation to something even deeper. So asking "when should I stop concentration" is in a sense like asking "when should I stop paying attention to my soul life and go back to simply spitting out words impulsively."

Concentration goes deeper and deeper and in the process the layers of our being are peeled. This leads us not simply into our personal self but into the Cosmos, because we gradually understand how in every thought that we pronounce the whole Cosmos takes part. Thus to understand our formed being we have to become conscious of the ideal life of the Cosmos.

[Lou Gold]

Thank you cleric!

I thought about how we talked a couple times about the loosening of the etheric body from the physical, and tried to couple it with the experience I had while meditating.
The "going sleeping" of the physical body gives me in no way the experience of loosening the etheric body.

I have a new sensation and link it with the concept that I got from here.
To me it is very superficial, because I want to come myself to the conclusion of loosening the etheric body.
For me it's only "going sleeping" of the body.

You are correct. As a whole, the sensation is completely sensory. The important thing is that through such sensations we become more aware of our bodily volume. Normally we don't pay much attention to our body parts except when they are stimulated or in pain. This can be done in the reverse direction. When we meditate we may try to fill, for example, our leg with our attention (assuming that our leg is currently in neutral state, no tingling, etc.). Normally it's natural for us to focus on a point. For example, it is relatively easy to focus on the tip of our toe. But to focus on the whole leg it's as if this focus has to bifurcate and fill the whole volume of the leg. Since our cognitive habits are quite linear (sequential) it's likely that we feel this filling as if our focus moves very quickly, randomly poking and producing sparks of attention.

If we try to do this, we'll see that in a certain sense our trying to fill our leg with attention reminds us of the tingling sensations. Or otherwise stated, in order to fill our leg with attention, the easiest thing is to vividly remember the tingling sensations we once experienced. Because think about it - if we have never had any sensations in our leg it would quite incomprehensible if someone asked us to fill it with attention. It's like if I ask you to fill with your attention the cubic meter of air in front of you. We can do that by imagining that we probe it with our visual ray or with our hands (which we can also do for our leg) but normally we can't conceive what it could be to feel that cube from within, as we feel our leg.

So for such reasons, the physical sensations are like orthopedic braces that entrain our intuitive activity in certain shapes. Once we're familiar with them we can perform similar gestures through our own effort. So the etheric is neither the physical tingling, nor even the remembered. Yet we gradually become conscious of it as we get to know the degrees of freedom of our spiritual activity. This is also why Steiner felt that some aspects of projective geometry can be used as metaphors.



Notice how there's no actual circle above. It's all lines (by the way, this is similar to the way we never find what fractals are ‘made of’, we only have relations of the unknown). In a similar sense, our momentary perceptual states of being can be thought of as constrained by ideal lines. They can't be seen as some additional perception but our intuitive being moves through them and understands their ideal relations, just like our mathematical thoughts move through such ideal constraints.

So when we see things in this way, we shouldn't expect to find the supersensible as some additional tingling sensation. You are completely right that this would be superficial! What counts, though, is that the tingling sensation entrains the focus of our thinking ray, which spreads out and fills the whole volume of the leg. This teaches us new degrees of freedom through which we can repeat that focusing action.

As a whole, the difficulty with these 'bodies' comes from the fact that our conceptions are dominated by the visual sense. When we think of a physical body we imagine space and human figure inside it. But in phenomenological sense the physical body is the totality of our sensory experiences. Thus knowing the physical body is really its experience from within. If we keep this firmly in mind then when we speak of other bodies we won't be tempted to fantasize the bodies from the side. We easily forget that if we knew the physical body only as a third-person picture, then all talks about smell, sound, sensation for bodily space and so on, would sound completely 'occult'. Thus what makes body a body is the inner experience. It's the same with the etheric. We only know it if we approach the corresponding inner experiences and not when we expect to see something.

As an example, imagine how by moving your arms in all possible ways you can sweep the volume of space reachable by your fingers. It would look something like a half-sphere in front of you and as something squished behind, since we can't reach much of the space behind our back. We have intuition of space only because we can sweep it in this way. Analogously, we can sweep the 'volume' of all thoughts and memories that we can reach. Just like our intuition of space serves as the intuitive context that integrates our spatial sensations together, so the inner experience of the etheric body manifests as the intuition that glues together the degrees of freedom of our spiritual activity (mainly thinking and remembering).

When we focus on our leg we can attain to a more holistic feeling of its volume but in the end it feels like, well, the inner sensation of a leg (what you call superficial). Things are different, however, when our concentration is in the head. Why? Because a head feels differently than a leg. The tingling sensations in the head are thoughts. Thus when we concentrate and gradually begin to feel the periphery as harmoniously integrated with our focus point, it feels not simply as tactile sensation in the head interior but like more panoramic experience of our thought life (remember the example with the IFS probing). We've often mentioned that when we reach this stage we're prone to build all kinds of idealistic theories that derive the World from a single principle (like Cosmin on the other thread). This only reflects the fact that we have reached the point to encompass our thinking life as a fractal but when we're not particularly aware of this we simply project that fractal on the World. However, when we're conscious of what is happening and the process goes even further, we're no longer fixated on our mind fractal but realize that it also metamorphoses within the greater context of our life. Thus we reach the experience of the life panorama.

So in a nutshell, just pay attention to all the different things you can do with your thinking activity. All the things you can think of and remember, all the ways you can fill your bodily parts with attention. When these things are performed we have concrete experiences, like the circle above. But hidden behind them are all the ideal lines that make this possible. So to see the etheric is really to become more and more intuitively aware of all these ideal constraints within which our spiritual activity manifests. When these possible thinking gestures are probed to sufficient degree, the holistic intuition of the thus integrated 'palette' becomes our consciousness within the etheric.

As someone with meditation practice, you certainly have experienced colors in the loosening state, am I right?

Di the colors have significance, or should I still try to not focus on anything else?

Yes, everything has significance, in the sense that there's nothing truly arbitrary in existence. We shouldn't close our eyes to the inner phenomena that necessarily begins to bubble as the etheric head-space opens. However, we should resist the temptation to immediately begin analyzing these new sensations. The deeper origin of color can be known later, when we begin to gain consciousness of the astral body (the colors are really connected with the different planetary spheres and the Elohim). However, just like breathing, we don't have to wait until we get there in order to work with color. As a matter of fact, working with the color rays (“... which are the seven Spirits of God sent forth into all the earth”) is one of the most important methods that Beinsa Duno has given. There's English translation here. It consists of Biblical verses arranged in a special way such that they focus on certain virtues, and these virtues are experienced in the higher worlds as specific hues. This has been long known and it is customary for instinctive clairvoyants to speak of colors in the aura which correspond to their soul qualities. Here however, just like in breathing, the goal today is to have fully conscious experience of color. In other words, the focus is in the spiritual essence, the Divine virtues, while the experience of inner color is the support. I would recommend to read first the second part, where explanations are given (starting at the chapter ‘THE METHOD OF THE COLOR RAYS OF LIGHT`).

My third question is, when should I stop concentrating on the "mantram" ?

Concentration never stops. This is what I tried to explain with the 'splitting the moment'. The verbal pronunciation of a formula naturally subsides after a while but not because we say "enough, let's do something else now" but because we have gone even deeper towards our spiritual core. Now the part of our being which lives in the verbal forms feels as surrounding environment.

As a comparison, we know how in life we often say something without thinking too much, words just pop out. Then we usually regret what we've said because it has been propelled by emotional impulse. This could have been avoided if we had more conscious experience of our inner being (remember the Tetris analogy that Ashvin recently reshared). In a similar way, when we concentrate, we should have the attitude that even this state is superficial in relation to something even deeper. So asking "when should I stop concentration" is in a sense like asking "when should I stop paying attention to my soul life and go back to simply spitting out words impulsively."

Concentration goes deeper and deeper and in the process the layers of our being are peeled. This leads us not simply into our personal self but into the Cosmos, because we gradually understand how in every thought that we pronounce the whole Cosmos takes part. Thus to understand our formed being we have to become conscious of the ideal life of the Cosmos.

Aloha Cleric,

While reading your response my thoughts drifted to a much loved story by the eco-zen poet Gary Snyder about his youthful days of training at a completely self-sufficient center in Japan. As an efficiency-oriented American high achiever he was always looking for ways to improve the work of gardening, gathering, cooking, cleaning, etc in order to create more time for meditation. His ideas were always received with cordiality and compliments but they were never enacted. Gary thought the monks were just being polite and he would go search for a deeper or somehow better idea, which again never generated an actual practice. It was driving him crazy. One day an elder monk put his arm around him and said, "You are missing that if we are more efficient and have more time to meditate our knees will hurt."

[Cleric]

Aloha Cleric,

While reading your response my thoughts drifted to a much loved story by the eco-zen poet Gary Snyder about his youthful days of training at a completely self-sufficient center in Japan. As an efficiency-oriented American high achiever he was always looking for ways to improve the work of gardening, gathering, cooking, cleaning, etc in order to create more time for meditation. His ideas were always received with cordiality and compliments but they were never enacted. Gary thought the monks were just being polite and he would go search for a deeper or somehow better idea, which again never generated an actual practice. It was driving him crazy. One day an elder monk put his arm around him and said, "You are missing that if we are more efficient and have more time to meditate our knees will hurt."

Hi Lou, thank you for your concern about my knees

Today, people know two basic states of consciousness: waking and sleeping. Ideally, in the not too far future, and it is already reality for some even today, a third state will be included which will manifest as periods in the morning and the evening where we consciously pass through intermediary states. This should in no way take away the waking time through which we need to work in the sensory world.

In the evening, consciousness expands and encompasses the day (the evening retrospect exercise is already a preparation for this). We rise the spiritual fruits of our daily labor as an offering toward the spiritual world where they are taken by higher beings and the souls of those presently not incarnated. These fruits are for them material to work on in ways which are not possible even for the great Initiates while still in a body. These beings do not have detailed consciousness of the Earthly happenings, they live in the more encompassing Cosmic rhythms within which the sensory spectrum is embedded. Thus, in a sense, through our work and the integration of our understanding, we rise toward them ideal bundles of meaning that are compatible with their 'wavelengths'. These they can understand and see what the problems in the sensory spectrum are. The beings take these ideal bundles as objects for their higher, Cosmic meditation. From their perspective they can envision orchestrated attunements in the flows of destiny of many souls, which aim to harmonize the Earthly process according to the understanding they have received and the greater Cosmic rhythms.

The morning routine is the time when we accommodate the seeds of the fruits which have been worked upon by the higher beings. These become Inspirations for all the tasks that need to be brought down to the physical level for furthering the evolutionary process. The seeds grow into deeds and new fruits that we rise again in the evening. It's an iterative process like most things.

So you see, there's enough work on all planes. And it's not just a matter of some pragmatic balance - not too much work, not too much meditation, but all in equilibrium. Things come naturally when we understand the Cosmic Process and strive to work consciously for its rhythmic unfolding. If we understand this, it also becomes clear that we're practically hurting the Cosmic development when we refuse to know anything about these things and how our existence fits in them. We are making the work of the higher beings and the departed very difficult because nothing comprehensible rises towards them when they contemplate human souls falling asleep at night, drunk, angry, desiring all kinds of sensory pleasures and so on.

[Güney27]

Aloha Cleric,

While reading your response my thoughts drifted to a much loved story by the eco-zen poet Gary Snyder about his youthful days of training at a completely self-sufficient center in Japan. As an efficiency-oriented American high achiever he was always looking for ways to improve the work of gardening, gathering, cooking, cleaning, etc in order to create more time for meditation. His ideas were always received with cordiality and compliments but they were never enacted. Gary thought the monks were just being polite and he would go search for a deeper or somehow better idea, which again never generated an actual practice. It was driving him crazy. One day an elder monk put his arm around him and said, "You are missing that if we are more efficient and have more time to meditate our knees will hurt."

Hi Lou, thank you for your concern about my knees

Today, people know two basic states of consciousness: waking and sleeping. Ideally, in the not too far future, and it is already reality for some even today, a third state will be included which will manifest as periods in the morning and the evening where we consciously pass through intermediary states. This should in no way take away the waking time through which we need to work in the sensory world.

In the evening, consciousness expands and encompasses the day (the evening retrospect exercise is already a preparation for this). We rise the spiritual fruits of our daily labor as an offering toward the spiritual world where they are taken by higher beings and the souls of those presently not incarnated. These fruits are for them material to work on in ways which are not possible even for the great Initiates while still in a body. These beings do not have detailed consciousness of the Earthly happenings, they live in the more encompassing Cosmic rhythms within which the sensory spectrum is embedded. Thus, in a sense, through our work and the integration of our understanding, we rise toward them ideal bundles of meaning that are compatible with their 'wavelengths'. These they can understand and see what the problems in the sensory spectrum are. The beings take these ideal bundles as objects for their higher, Cosmic meditation. From their perspective they can envision orchestrated attunements in the flows of destiny of many souls, which aim to harmonize the Earthly process according to the understanding they have received and the greater Cosmic rhythms.

The morning routine is the time when we accommodate the seeds of the fruits which have been worked upon by the higher beings. These become Inspirations for all the tasks that need to be brought down to the physical level for furthering the evolutionary process. The seeds grow into deeds and new fruits that we rise again in the evening. It's an iterative process like most things.

So you see, there's enough work on all planes. And it's not just a matter of some pragmatic balance - not too much work, not too much meditation, but all in equilibrium. Things come naturally when we understand the Cosmic Process and strive to work consciously for its rhythmic unfolding. If we understand this, it also becomes clear that we're practically hurting the Cosmic development when we refuse to know anything about these things and how our existence fits in them. We are making the work of the higher beings and the departed very difficult because nothing comprehensible rises towards them when they contemplate human souls falling asleep at night, drunk, angry, desiring all kinds of sensory pleasures and so on.

Is this the reason we should pray before sleeping?

The other thing I think about right now thanks to your text is, that we need to learn how to understand occult literature first.
It is nothing given.
It's like a big reorientation of the former worldview.

What happens with an abstract intellectual understanding of Ss?
Will it pass the threshold too?
Or do it become worthless?

I could also ask what happens to a person with dementia after death, will he awaken in the same way in his life review, like a healthy person?
What happens to his spiritual knowledge, if he had studied some occult literature?

[Lou Gold]

Aloha Cleric,

While reading your response my thoughts drifted to a much loved story by the eco-zen poet Gary Snyder about his youthful days of training at a completely self-sufficient center in Japan. As an efficiency-oriented American high achiever he was always looking for ways to improve the work of gardening, gathering, cooking, cleaning, etc in order to create more time for meditation. His ideas were always received with cordiality and compliments but they were never enacted. Gary thought the monks were just being polite and he would go search for a deeper or somehow better idea, which again never generated an actual practice. It was driving him crazy. One day an elder monk put his arm around him and said, "You are missing that if we are more efficient and have more time to meditate our knees will hurt."

Hi Lou, thank you for your concern about my knees

Today, people know two basic states of consciousness: waking and sleeping. Ideally, in the not too far future, and it is already reality for some even today, a third state will be included which will manifest as periods in the morning and the evening where we consciously pass through intermediary states. This should in no way take away the waking time through which we need to work in the sensory world.

In the evening, consciousness expands and encompasses the day (the evening retrospect exercise is already a preparation for this). We rise the spiritual fruits of our daily labor as an offering toward the spiritual world where they are taken by higher beings and the souls of those presently not incarnated. These fruits are for them material to work on in ways which are not possible even for the great Initiates while still in a body. These beings do not have detailed consciousness of the Earthly happenings, they live in the more encompassing Cosmic rhythms within which the sensory spectrum is embedded. Thus, in a sense, through our work and the integration of our understanding, we rise toward them ideal bundles of meaning that are compatible with their 'wavelengths'. These they can understand and see what the problems in the sensory spectrum are. The beings take these ideal bundles as objects for their higher, Cosmic meditation. From their perspective they can envision orchestrated attunements in the flows of destiny of many souls, which aim to harmonize the Earthly process according to the understanding they have received and the greater Cosmic rhythms.

The morning routine is the time when we accommodate the seeds of the fruits which have been worked upon by the higher beings. These become Inspirations for all the tasks that need to be brought down to the physical level for furthering the evolutionary process. The seeds grow into deeds and new fruits that we rise again in the evening. It's an iterative process like most things.

So you see, there's enough work on all planes. And it's not just a matter of some pragmatic balance - not too much work, not too much meditation, but all in equilibrium. Things come naturally when we understand the Cosmic Process and strive to work consciously for its rhythmic unfolding. If we understand this, it also becomes clear that we're practically hurting the Cosmic development when we refuse to know anything about these things and how our existence fits in them. We are making the work of the higher beings and the departed very difficult because nothing comprehensible rises towards them when they contemplate human souls falling asleep at night, drunk, angry, desiring all kinds of sensory pleasures and so on.

Cleric,

Continuing in the spirit of an elder's wisdom, we might contemplate this:



You report:

"In the evening, consciousness expands and encompasses the day (the evening retrospect exercise is already a preparation for this). We rise the spiritual fruits of our daily labor as an offering toward the spiritual world where they are taken by higher beings and the souls of those presently not incarnated. These fruits are for them material to work on in ways which are not possible even for the great Initiates while still in a body. These beings do not have detailed consciousness of the Earthly happenings, they live in the more encompassing Cosmic rhythms within which the sensory spectrum is embedded. Thus, in a sense, through our work and the integration of our understanding, we rise toward them ideal bundles of meaning that are compatible with their 'wavelengths'. These they can understand and see what the problems in the sensory spectrum are. The beings take these ideal bundles as objects for their higher, Cosmic meditation. From their perspective they can envision orchestrated attunements in the flows of destiny of many souls, which aim to harmonize the Earthly process according to the understanding they have received and the greater Cosmic rhythms."

Are these firm assertions based on your personal experiences and/or direct contact with disincarnate beings?

Some disincarnate beings say they work better with people who are in deep dreamless sleep because they are less tangled in egoic projections.

[Güney27]

I can relate to the fear, not to the rest of what you describe. I am definitely at a more beginner level. Also for me it's a sort of cold fear. No fast heart beats, only a kind of general mood of apprehension, a heaviness. Sometimes I have seen some unknown scary characters.

I'm certainly at a beginner level too.
I can't go pass the state of colorfull "blackness".
It takes 15-25 minutes to get to this state for me, if I even get there.

The thing is that I meditated a couple years ago in an other way (by focusing on soemmething or my breathing) and could get to this point too.

What are the scary characters you see?

Güney,

How do you know that 15-25 minutes have passed, do you keep a clock in check during your meditation?
I am curious because I have no ability to estimate how much time is going by. By the way I only do it when I have no obligations coming up for hours, otherwise I would be distracted by the upcoming events and their preparation.
Other than that, I am doing concentration on a man-made object everyday. I set a timer, I've just gone up to 9 minutes.
On the appearance of characters, I think it's particular to me, so I hope nobody will feel doubtful or hesitant to engage in thinking exercises for this reason. Now this will surely sound ridiculous. However, one 'character' that I remember is a sort of very energetic and active, vaguely threatening, green figure, similar to a man. I saw it at two occasions unless it was not the same figure, I am not entirely sure. Things like that. Again, I understand these impressions are personal stuff, so I hope nobody reading here will expect or dread similar things.

Federica,

I check the time before I start meditating and again when I'm finished it.
Similar to you, I don't exactly know how much time passed on.
When I can reach the described state, it's usually the end of my meditation, because my concentration isn't sharp anymore.

[Federica]

In certain sense, in our thinking being we're always within the context of these astral rhythms. Even if we don't understand the deeper nature of these processes we can still work on them, for example, by consecration. Even the most trivial activities can be spiritualized in this way. For example, we wash our hands. We do that for hygienic purposes. But we can think while washing "May just as the water washes away the impurities from my hands, so Divine Love flow through me and wash away all dark thoughts and feelings." This is really the proper mood in which the exercise in question should be taken. We breathe instinctively all the time. Why not breathe once in a while by consecrating our breath to the Divine?

Here I would say - maybe some feel similarly - that for the way my particular constitution is made (yeah, made in Italy
perhaps this is why) I wouldn’t feel very drawn to consecrating everyday gestures in this way, that is, without understanding the deeper nature of the processes that, for example, orient toward and precipitate in the action of hand washing.

I am reminded of what Stainer says, that we can and should study and understand spiritual science before acquiring clairvoyance, that is, experiential, conscious understanding of reality from without the magnetizing and dulling filter of our physical body. To exaggerate a little, this consecration would feel to me like capturing and reworking a prayerful mood, but without freely offering it to a higher intelligence, whom I would submit to, and trust to harbor the prayer, and harmonize it as necessary.

To me it would feel like a wish for magic, or a prayer with conditions, where I try to catalyze the prayerful mood to direct it to the divine, but at the same time blindly formulating that it has to pass through a particular intersection in the world. I am probably misinterpreting, but this consecrating intention seems different from the slow-pace, ceremonial type of exercises when one fills with attention a simple everyday gesture as in, for example, Zajonc, whom Ashvin recently quoted. There, the intent is to try and map out the working of the will, through our body and gestures, in order to build up some strength and create more specific intuitive context around its unfolding, but with no intention to impress formulas of unknown (to the extent we don't understand them) origin in the flow of becoming.

To be clear, if I need help with dark thoughts and feelings, I would feel more whole praying to a higher being to enable me to deal with these, rather than attempting to catalyze higher forces through the (for me arbitrary) gesture of hand washing. It feels as if I was imposing a constraint to those higher forces, but without really grasping why and how it would interfere. Therefore I tend to think that prayer is for everyone, development of thinking is for everyone, but consecration is not. Am I misunderstanding consecration?

[AshvinP]

In certain sense, in our thinking being we're always within the context of these astral rhythms. Even if we don't understand the deeper nature of these processes we can still work on them, for example, by consecration. Even the most trivial activities can be spiritualized in this way. For example, we wash our hands. We do that for hygienic purposes. But we can think while washing "May just as the water washes away the impurities from my hands, so Divine Love flow through me and wash away all dark thoughts and feelings." This is really the proper mood in which the exercise in question should be taken. We breathe instinctively all the time. Why not breathe once in a while by consecrating our breath to the Divine?

Here I would say - maybe some feel similarly - that for the way my particular constitution is made (yeah, made in Italy
perhaps this is why) I wouldn’t feel very drawn to consecrating everyday gestures in this way, that is, without understanding the deeper nature of the processes that, for example, orient toward and precipitate in the action of hand washing.

I am reminded of what Stainer says, that we can and should study and understand spiritual science before acquiring clairvoyance, that is, experiential, conscious understanding of reality from without the magnetizing and dulling filter of our physical body. To exaggerate a little, this consecration would feel to me like capturing and reworking a prayerful mood, but without freely offering it to a higher intelligence, whom I would submit to, and trust to harbor the prayer, and harmonize it as necessary.

To me it would feel like a wish for magic, or a prayer with conditions, where I try to catalyze the prayerful mood to direct it to the divine, but at the same time blindly formulating that it has to pass through a particular intersection in the world. I am probably misinterpreting, but this consecrating intention seems different from the slow-pace, ceremonial type of exercises when one fills with attention a simple everyday gesture as in, for example, Zajonc, whom Ashvin recently quoted. There, the intent is to try and map out the working of the will, through our body and gestures, in order to build up some strength and create more specific intuitive context around its unfolding, but with no intention to impress formulas of unknown (to the extent we don't understand them) origin in the flow of becoming.

To be clear, if I need help with dark thoughts and feelings, I would feel more whole praying to a higher being to enable me to deal with these, rather than attempting to catalyze higher forces through the (for me arbitrary) gesture of hand washing. It feels as if I was imposing a constraint to those higher forces, but without really grasping why and how it would interfere. Therefore I tend to think that prayer is for everyone, development of thinking is for everyone, but consecration is not. Am I misunderstanding consecration?

Federica,

I will offer a couple thoughts on your question. I don't think the consecration and the ceremonial exercises are too different. One way I would think about it is that we are always clouded by dark thoughts and feelings when we are not fully present in our spiritual activity. When we are walking in the house and bang our knee against a table, what does the pain sensation tell us? Basically, it points right back to our walking activity and tells us our attention was not present enough in that activity - perhaps we were thinking about what to wear when we go out or what to get for dinner. Then, hopefully, we take that feedback and adjust our inner state to be more present and attentive, at least until the next time we lapse into inattention and absence.

In the normal course of life, practically all sensations feedback to our inner activity and provide the opportunity to adjust that activity to interact more harmoniously with its surroundings. That happens so seamlessly that we don't even notice it most of the time. This is also thinking-will activity - after all, we must set intentions to move around our surroundings, wash our hands, and so forth. But when it becomes so habitual that we no longer experience ourselves setting the intention and carrying it out, the intents and the perceptual flow are completely out-of-phase. So the question is how to take a more conscious stance and become increasingly present in our thinking-attending activity, so we don't keep lapsing into inattention and absence?

We can try to work around the edges on the horizontal plane, but ultimately our efforts won't get too far until we also center our spiritual activity in the temporal thickness of the Divine vertical axis. This axis can firmly anchor our activity at any given moment when we are interacting with the psychic and bodily support for our spiritual activity (practically always), because that support is constellated precisely through the Divine axis. Even if we don't understand the detailed depths of this Divine axis, the consecrating and ceremonial gestures are simply that we recognize its existence and its power to concentrically harmonize the depth layers of our activity in gratitude and devotion. Just as the pain in the knee feeds back to our attending activity, these gestures act as higher-order (more conscious) feedback for the Divine. So it is not at all a constraint on the Divine axis but, rather, a nutritious offering that will also feedback into our capacity for attention and presence.

PS - I think it always helps to center our activity in the axis by slowing the pace of these 'trivial' things we do. We can then feel intimately involved in every little movement of the arms and hands. We can even try to notice how the sensation of the water changes in relation to our hand movements. Of course we aren't analyzing this with the intellect, but simply remaining intuitively present in the rhythmically and harmonically changing context.

PPS - I think there is little need to be concerned with 'overdoing it' with any attempts to remain present through consecration/ceremonial exercises since they are so unfamiliar to our normal inattentive habits. Even if we set the firm intention to do such consecration with every hand wash, we will surely forget or skip it a good amount of the time. That itself can be taken as a sign that it is something worth devoting more effort to.

[Federica]

In certain sense, in our thinking being we're always within the context of these astral rhythms. Even if we don't understand the deeper nature of these processes we can still work on them, for example, by consecration. Even the most trivial activities can be spiritualized in this way. For example, we wash our hands. We do that for hygienic purposes. But we can think while washing "May just as the water washes away the impurities from my hands, so Divine Love flow through me and wash away all dark thoughts and feelings." This is really the proper mood in which the exercise in question should be taken. We breathe instinctively all the time. Why not breathe once in a while by consecrating our breath to the Divine?

Here I would say - maybe some feel similarly - that for the way my particular constitution is made (yeah, made in Italy
perhaps this is why) I wouldn’t feel very drawn to consecrating everyday gestures in this way, that is, without understanding the deeper nature of the processes that, for example, orient toward and precipitate in the action of hand washing.

I am reminded of what Stainer says, that we can and should study and understand spiritual science before acquiring clairvoyance, that is, experiential, conscious understanding of reality from without the magnetizing and dulling filter of our physical body. To exaggerate a little, this consecration would feel to me like capturing and reworking a prayerful mood, but without freely offering it to a higher intelligence, whom I would submit to, and trust to harbor the prayer, and harmonize it as necessary.

To me it would feel like a wish for magic, or a prayer with conditions, where I try to catalyze the prayerful mood to direct it to the divine, but at the same time blindly formulating that it has to pass through a particular intersection in the world. I am probably misinterpreting, but this consecrating intention seems different from the slow-pace, ceremonial type of exercises when one fills with attention a simple everyday gesture as in, for example, Zajonc, whom Ashvin recently quoted. There, the intent is to try and map out the working of the will, through our body and gestures, in order to build up some strength and create more specific intuitive context around its unfolding, but with no intention to impress formulas of unknown (to the extent we don't understand them) origin in the flow of becoming.

To be clear, if I need help with dark thoughts and feelings, I would feel more whole praying to a higher being to enable me to deal with these, rather than attempting to catalyze higher forces through the (for me arbitrary) gesture of hand washing. It feels as if I was imposing a constraint to those higher forces, but without really grasping why and how it would interfere. Therefore I tend to think that prayer is for everyone, development of thinking is for everyone, but consecration is not. Am I misunderstanding consecration?

Federica,

I will offer a couple thoughts on your question. I don't think the consecration and the ceremonial exercises are too different. One way I would think about it is that we are always clouded by dark thoughts and feelings when we are not fully present in our spiritual activity. When we are walking in the house and bang our knee against a table, what does the pain sensation tell us? Basically, it points right back to our walking activity and tells us our attention was not present enough in that activity - perhaps we were thinking about what to wear when we go out or what to get for dinner. Then, hopefully, we take that feedback and adjust our inner state to be more present and attentive, at least until the next time we lapse into inattention and absence.

In the normal course of life, practically all sensations feedback to our inner activity and provide the opportunity to adjust that activity to interact more harmoniously with its surroundings. That happens so seamlessly that we don't even notice it most of the time. This is also thinking-will activity - after all, we must set intentions to move around our surroundings, wash our hands, and so forth. But when it becomes so habitual that we no longer experience ourselves setting the intention and carrying it out, the intents and the perceptual flow are completely out-of-phase. So the question is how to take a more conscious stance and become increasingly present in our thinking-attending activity, so we don't keep lapsing into inattention and absence?

We can try to work around the edges on the horizontal plane, but ultimately our efforts won't get too far until we also center our spiritual activity in the temporal thickness of the Divine vertical axis. This axis can firmly anchor our activity at any given moment when we are interacting with the psychic and bodily support for our spiritual activity (practically always), because that support is constellated precisely through the Divine axis. Even if we don't understand the detailed depths of this Divine axis, the consecrating and ceremonial gestures are simply that we recognize its existence and its power to concentrically harmonize the depth layers of our activity in gratitude and devotion. Just as the pain in the knee feeds back to our attending activity, these gestures act as higher-order (more conscious) feedback for the Divine. So it is not at all a constraint on the Divine axis but, rather, a nutritious offering that will also feedback into our capacity for attention and presence.

PS - I think it always helps to center our activity in the axis by slowing the pace of these 'trivial' things we do. We can then feel intimately involved in every little movement of the arms and hands. We can even try to notice how the sensation of the water changes in relation to our hand movements. Of course we aren't analyzing this with the intellect, but simply remaining intuitively present in the rhythmically and harmonically changing context.

PPS - I think there is little need to be concerned with 'overdoing it' with any attempts to remain present through consecration/ceremonial exercises since they are so unfamiliar to our normal inattentive habits. Even if we set the firm intention to do such consecration with every hand wash, we will surely forget or skip it a good amount of the time. That itself can be taken as a sign that it is something worth devoting more effort to.

Thank you, Ashvin.

I have to say, to me your entire post sounds like a detailed illustration of the ceremonial exercises à la Zajonc. I don't feel the question is addressed. Yes, in both the ceremonial and the consecration exercises we may face our lacking understanding of the Divine axis. But it still seems to me that the two exercises relate to this lack in different ways.

In the ceremonial exercise, we pay intense attention to the thinking-will flow coalescing in our body’s interaction with its environment, thereby strengthening awareness of our intuitive orientation. In the consecration exercise we go a step beyond the attention. We also superimpose a precise, personal formula that we, however, don't understand in its working. I believe it could trigger an aspiration to 'jump ahead' and a hope to bypass existing constraints to our flow of becoming and proper understanding of how to transform our flow in harmony with those constraints.

There could be a risk that, instead of working slowly at buiding a controlled experience of our spiritual activity, the exercise could trigger a habit of wishing: "let's affirm that the mysterious power of, say, washing hands, can also mysteriously wash away my dark thoughts". In other words I feel that - in the insufficiently trained soul - consecration could trigger a form of supersition.