New Discovery, positioning yourself in space

So... I sometimes use a metaphor to understand conscious awareness as opposed to unconcious awareness. I think of the unconcious as an immense dark sea and conciousness as a torch/flash light that illuminates bits of the sea. Most people's beams are directed automatically in only certain limited places... that's not important in this case - what is important in this case is the actual light beam - how much light/attention do you have? and how much of it is taken up by automatic tasks?

One of the things we tend to do is constantly scan the environment so that we know 'where we are' - "I'm at home, I'm in bed, I'm at work, I'm in London, I'm in a new location, I'm on the pavement". This is completely automatic - you dont think about it and you dont notice yourself doing it - it's there to make us feel safe - because 'where we are' often equates to how safe we are. But the thing is this constant scanning is using up a huge proportion of our light beam - even if we dont need to know where we are... it also uses up our energy, our attention and gives our ego the chance to start trying to control 'where you are'. Constantly working out what's safe, what's compelling, where to go etc. If you dont know where you are - and have no concern in knowing this, you cannot feel unsafe, you cannot grasp and attempt to control things beyond your control, you cannot worry or plan etc. basically you can become still and present in the now - if only you lose yourself... in other words lose your concern over where you are.

So try this out if this sounds like it could be usefull - I first tried it lying in bed - because I remember doing something similar as a child for entertainment. Feel yourself in bed in whatever room you are in - then feel yourself in bed in another room, then another, then another - keep going, each time really feel the place and then move to another place - keep going and keep getting faster and faster at some point it becomes a blur - keep the blur spinning and suddenly you'll pop out of it into emptiness - you are nowhere/everywhere... usually (unless you've done a lot of meditation) this is frightning - and you'll immediately re-locate yourself in your room. But getting comfortable in losing yourself gives you a much bigger light beam of awareness to play with - whether in your practices or in interacting or just when you're relaxing.

dont do this while crossing the road or driving!

As a child I'd do something similar - I'd imagine my bed positioned in different parts of the room, untill I was confused as to where in the room I really was... but I still knew I was in my room...

P.S.
Try associating yourself with a situation in the past then associate yourself with an imagined situation in the future - then the past again - then future - past - future - past - future... faster and faster - each time a different situation... get fast enough and you'll get to the NOW.

P.P.S
I know most of you won't try it - but for the adventurous ones that do, please let me know how it worked out!

This exercise gave me some associations. When I was a kid I once played with a schoolmates name, so I kept repeating it in my head. And his name could be used so, that in Slovene, it meant sort of like he˙s crossing himself (like making a cross with a pencil). After a few moments I completely forgot his name. I tried to remember, but my mind was blank. So I had to ask him, which was weird since I knew him for some years.

The other thing your exercise remebered me on, was one of the exercises in a book by Slavinski called Sunjata (maybe in English it would be Shoonyata? it means emptiness I think). I`ll describe it.

"Who`s in your head?

Stretch your index finger and point it at one of the objects in the room and say in yourself: "Here is human being" or "Here is (located) a _______"(and say the name of the thing).
Then point the index finger towards another thing or person and again say in yourself: "Here is _____"
Repeat that for a third time.
Now point the index finger towards your head, but don`t touch it and close your eyes. Now give yourself this question with emphasis: "Who is (located) here?"
When the seminar of Sunjata is finished and you do this same exercise, the result will be completely different. The Pure Awareness of Emptiness will be here."

Don`t know how all this is related to your exercise, but it crossed my mind and I just thought I`d share.
If I try your exercise I will post my experience, however, I`m lazy and have a lot of other stuff to do, so I can`t promise anything.

Sounds really interesting Freeform! I'm going to try working with this one for sure.

Incidentally I was reading one of the first posts here on taobums and found Ron Jeremys reply really enlightening and for me somewhat relating to what you just wrote..
http://www.thetaobums.com/What-the-hell-wi...-Tien-t37.html#

Or maybe it was just me.

That was great post by RJ!

Thanks for that. You're quite right - it's very much connected to this technique.

I find when I'm up in my head I'm also 'out there'. (in our culture everything seems to be outside of us). So I keep (automatically and completely unconciously) checking where 'out there' I am - and because this function is so connected with the upper tan tien I end up constantly thinking about what's 'out there' (which has the effect of projecting what's 'in here' (in the monkey mind) to the 'out there'.) Am I making any sense? - lol

Losing the 'out there' seems to have the effect of losing 'in here' - so you lose your grip on where you are and your worries and thought loops related to where you are and what's 'inside' (emotions, egoic patterns/games etc).

Sensoraly it's rather disorientating - because not only are you dropped into the depths of the lower tan tien, but the the thread that leads you back through the labirynth into your head is also lost (ofcourse not completely - you can 'snap' back into 'normal' mode). So physically, when I use the technique, I feel like I'm adrift in the oceans of the lower cauldron - rather than feeling a sensation in my belly. It's like the difference between looking at a swimming pool and swimming in it.

I think learning to 'move' (physically - but also in the sense of using intention) from this state/space could be interesting as a development from the initial technique. (I'll try doing my taichi routine in the state and report back).

I've noticed something else - I got a friend to try it out - and initially he couldn't do it. So I got him to start much slower... feel and sense where he was, then think of somewhere else and slowly build up the sensory detail of being there (it turned out that remembering the smell quickly got my friend feeling that he was fully in that location)... then we do it again - another location which we would slowly sense with all our senses (what we saw, heard, felt (texture, temperature etc. but also emotion) smell, even taste) it seems some people have one of the senses as the 'boss' - because that sense immediately makes an imagined environment feel real.

So yeah - at first it took a couple of minutes for each location, but it got faster and faster (especially after learning what (sense) it is that makes it seem 'real') and then you just have to trust yourself and change locations in milliseconds then almost nanoseconds (that's where it becomes a blur) and then you speed it up to infinity and suddenly pop out into 'living stillness'.

I'll try focusing on the LTT in that state and report back also.


Pero,

What you said about your friends name is very interesting! I was trying something similar out today and realised it's nearly exactly what you described. What I would do is take a name/word and say it again and again, concentraiting on how the word sounds (rather than what it means) each time I repeat the word I slightly change how I say it - it's meant to be playfull... it doesn't take long before the word sounds silly... then you lose the meaning or how the word is used - it starts to seem like it's in a foreign language... I would then do it with every word that would float into my attention... after 10 minutes no more words came. Another cool drill for stilling the mind!

It's cool that you're into Slavinski - have you been to any workshops? I'm hoping there will be one in London sometime soon. The way I went about 'losing where I am' is something that resembles how Slavinski creates his drills.

Well that's all you have to say to get the polarity responder involved.

I played with this a few times yesterday and was struck by it's simple power. When I was doing it before bed last night I started spontaneously associating into many many old places I've been in my past that I'd forgotten about, and so this brought time into the meditation as well which added to the disorientation. Eventually I did break through into a pretty profound emptiness I must say.

All this reminds me, have you read Time, Space, Knowledge yet? Seems like this is really up your alley, I've heard really good things about it.

I did stuff like that to, but not with any meaningful purpose. If I had to remember something (like what to buy at the groceries) I kept repeating it. After a while, it didn`t make any sense to me.
Actually, this reminded me about another thing I read in a book by Slavinski.
I think it was in his Keys to Psychic Magick (though I don`t know if it exists in English).

The repeating of ones own name or nickname was used as a means to achieve astral projection I believe. He was describing the same thing as you. Word begins to sound weird, loses meaning, foreign, after some time you beging to sort of look at yourself from a distance. Don`t remember exactly how it went, and I borrowed the book to a friend. I think it was something related to the fact that we identify ourselves with the name.

Slavinski has really good stuff, I just wish I practiced it. When I first came into contact with his work, I was still mostly theoretical and gaining mental balast as he says. After I gained some "weight" I started practicing, but it wasn`t his stuff that I was interested in at that time.
I think he hasn`t got all his books in English, or does he? "Keys to Psychic Magick" is really good, also "Psychic Training of the Yogis" and "Sunjata". These were my favorites, but I have a few others as well.

Haven`t been to any seminars yet, and when I looked for it a bit I didn`t anything for this year, found 2003/04. And even if I would find something, I`m not sure if I`m ready. I would like to go to a Sunyata seminar, PEAT and Gnostic intesive are interesting, but I`m not sure that I`m ready for the work in diads. Telling about myself to a total stranger....

Cool!

I'm glad someone tried it! I'm finding this drill has a lot of bang for the buck. I'm trying to do it at different times (standing, sitting, moving, talking etc). It's a little difficult at the moment - because I seem to pop myself out of the state sometimes - but I'm noticing what it is that pops me out (and how I pop out). So I think it's a case of stabilizing this state and making this dissorientation feel more comfortable (and it already feels very comfey when in bed - standing and walking on the other hand is somewhat scary - similar to a subtle vertigo feeling - maybe I need some more grounding practice to stabilize it?

Thanks for recomending the book, Sean - it's on my wishlist - ready for my next amazon 'mega-shipment' lol .

I had exactly the same experience of remembering places and times that I havent thought about in many many years - it's almost like opening the door into a part of your brain that locates you in time-space - and looking inside the door you can find all the time-space you've experienced - and all very vividly.

I actually experimented doing the same excersise with time only. So I would remember something in the past then think of something in the future and carry on in exactly the same way as with the drill above.

The result was very funny indeed - I completely lost track of time and then 'woke up' (I wasn't quite asleep - but close) not knowing what day it was, what time it was, how long I was 'away' for and what I had just done... very strange - I also was giggling for hours afterwards - felt like a newbie stoner laughing at everything - I had a very blissfull glow for the rest of the day. The only similar experience I've had was from 1 hour floating/sensory deprivation session - but that felt more hormonal/chemical - this was 'lighter' - hard to explain in words.

The technique of experiencing a then b faster and faster has given me a tool to use on so many other things - and I'm finding this is very similar to Slavinski's DP3 technique (althouh the way he does it has some important differences). I'm finding that this is a way to integrate a polarity - and the resulting stillness is the neutral bit in between a and b.

One thing I did was use it on making a decision - I wont go into detail, but I had to decide between doing a and doing b - there was a lot of emotional energy invested in doing one or the other and I had a hard time sticking with a decision - so I did the technique - imagine doing a then imagine doing b then a then b etc. untill I popped out into emptiness again, and I forgot what the options where and why they were so important. When the time came I actully made the decision naturally, without even thinking about it (or even noticing that it was a 'decision') - it was the 'right' decision, I'm happy to say!

my next experiment is to use this on goals! a will be me as I am now and b will be me with the goal achieved...

Extremely interesting topic! Thanx to Freeform and everyone else contributing.

I have started to re-evaluate this sensation of dissorientation that we talk about here. When I first started meditating I naturally seemed to loose up my body-mind connection and my "self" (or sense of "I" or what else we should call it) could start to move irrespective of my body. A lot of feelings of the natural point of balance and such. This naturally led me to altered states. However after a while as I read up more and more on meditation I tended to regard this feeling of dissorientation as connected with entering trance states, and thus not conscious states of meditation. Therefore I started to put my intention on keeping my sense of balance unafflicted in order to avoid following through into any sorts of unconscious trance states. I believe that now I can allow this sensation of dissorientation/change of balance point without giving in to any unconscious meditation states. So I will take this up to put my sense of I into other places in my body and outside and just like freeform said try to get used to this shift in "the assemblage point" (to quote ol' castaneda) without getting hazy or dissociated.

And yes the idea struck me too, similar to freeform that this feat discussed here might be one of the secret keys to profficience in taichichuan and other IMA's. To move from the centrepoint of energetic connections in the body

Sorry for the rambling. Merely formulating my thoughts mostly for myself, If someone else gets an idéa or two out of it then great.




Again extremely interesting applications of your technique.. Keep us updated on your progress!

I really need to get that slavinski ebook. Finding out methods how to move closer and closer to wu wei and experinence various degrees of yuan states is actually one of my major goals on this path so..

all the exercises of the book are described here on this website

Great insight - and a very important one too! I find that the Huna tradition sheds a lot of light on this matter. The unconscious is a very important part of self development in Huna - the idea is to first become proficient in entering trance/subconscious states (which is linked to the LTT)... after that you learn to open up the deep inner channels (8 extraordinary channels) - which allows you to remain conscious while in your LTT (unconsciousness). When this is achieved you have several possibilities - you can work on your ego, behaviours and patterns of thought from 'in there' or you can gradually connect up to your 'Higher Self'. Eventually the idea is to create a balance where by your unconscious is informed by your higher self - and this seems to be similar to the wu wei state described in Taoism.

I have to run - but you've given me some extra pieces to help work out the puzzle!