06-27-2011, 12:00 AM
watergaze wrote:
Bob wrote:
I hope this helps
Hi Bob, thanks for your reply, sure it helps. You basically gave me a recipe of what you find to be helpful. And you told me to concentrate on that upper part of my head while pulling up the sexual energy, which I have not done before. So I will try this.
After some practice you can move your awareness or consciousness to various places in and around the body. This awareness as I understand it is Me. So, basically I am there. From "there" I can pull the energy up. Or circulate the energy around my body which I am not too good at. It is good to not open one chakra more than others. It is also good to open the higher ones, (heart, throat, brow and crown,) rather than the lower (solar plexus area and sexual organ area.) I'm no expert and some of these lower ones are difficult to distinguish one from another. There are drawings and charts but some differences in location in them.
Form what I gather the goal is to have them all open but in balance.
I have not been meditating, but I know how to sit in one position for some time (not any position though and not sure how long, never tried measuring it). I can lie down and be still, if that can be done/if that still counts (does it?), it is more comfortable. I had times when I realized that I had been in the same position during the whole night..
My teacher used to advise against meditating lying down because it could tend to cause insomnia when you actually lie down to sleep. As far as position goes you just find a comfortable sitting position with your spine straight. You can tend to fall over after a time if you are not balanced.
The 1 thought/no thought thing I will have to try, I have not been specifically focusing on not thinking while sitting in one position, just during walking or just when doing whatever. What counts as one thought? For example 'life is beautiful' is one thought but it can lead to a lot of images and memories..
No thoughts would be just being. One thought could be like putting your awareness on crown chakra or it could be just rolling ideas about a project through your mind. Ideas just pop in that solve problems you are working on.
I have kept myself away from meditation because I had a sort of scary experience when I first tried it. I thought it better not to mess with stuff I do not understand . Maybe you can name for me what I experienced there.. To make a long story short it was like I forgot about myself, that I am me, I was in this vast realm where I just was and was not anyone really. I'd say it was a dark place (but not dark in terms of negative). I have not had any notion of being a being with an identity and as such I have not really had any conscious drive to come back to myself from that place. When I got back to my body/back to being myself I got frightened. I was not scared while in that place, but once I came back I was, because I realized I could have just stayed there and not even known that I am not being somewhere else. Not known about being the me /myself that I have a body/life/identity here. I think it was my tonal/ego that got scared, because it was like it was not really that needed, that it could just puff out of existence. My coming back seemed almost like good luck to me at that time.. I decided meditating was dangerous . This happened maybe 8 years ago. I have tried meditating a few times since (not more than 10), just in a kind of relaxing and quieting down way. I have actually forgotten this experience for some time.
The subconscious mind will play tricks on you because it does not want to lose control that it has always had. When we feel fear and other emotions it is actually a feeling in the body we are feeling and relating it to a past fear. When doing body awareness if we are deep enough we do not feel the body and so we do not feel fear. Anyway, just observe. That is what I was told for so long. You will feel all kinds of wierd things like your legs in different positions than you remember them being when you sat down to meditate etc. Just observe, no judgement, no worries.
I was also taught to open and close each meditation with a "protection" of sorts. We used the "Qabala Cross." It helps you to initiate the meditation and then close yourself down. It also helps to acknowledge a higher being to protect you while you meditate.
You do this by putting together the index, second finger and thumb of your right hand together and saying, "For Thine is the Kingdom and the Power and the Glory forever and ever, Amen." As you say these words you touch in turn your forehead (Thine), Solar Plexus (Kingdom), Power (Right shoulder), Glory (left shoulder) Ever and ever (circle above your Breast twice) and Amen (touch your breastbone.)
Other schools of thought use other symbols but something should be performed to open and close to separate the two states of mind and ask protection when entering into a "magical operation."
Just today I have encountered the term thymic chakra and not knowing much about chakras I went to google it to find which one it is. From the name I would have guessed it is the throat chakra, but I did not find that the throat chakra's alternative name was thymic. So I googled thymic and found out:
It is a chakra "located between the Throat and Heart chakras. Like the Base of the Throat Chakra it is an important activator of higher consciousness. " (http://www.kheper.net/topics/chakras/Thymic.htm)
Connected to the Thyroid gland. Supposed to have to do with Clairaudio,.. Hearing abilities.
So I guess what I meant before was the Base of the Throat chakra . Sure sounds like it: "Base of Throat chakra is located at the V-like notch at the base of the neck and top of the sternum (breastbone)" (http://www.kheper.net/top...ras/Base_of_Throat.html)
So just thought I would clarify that, since it presented itself to me..
Bob wrote:
You go through life more calmly and less ruled by emotions and lustful thoughts etc. And you begin to experience the world in other, deeper ways.I do not have problems with lustful thoughts but recently my body gets aroused for no good reason during an activity (that is not even remotely sexual) where I need to concentrate. So it is not like I see something/someone sexy or because I am close to someone or that I think of something like that, it just comes on its own, the body feels it and I do not have thoughts or images of sexual things while it is happening, unless I decide to act on it. It is somewhat of a nuisance..
I've had similar things. For me, I think that it was a case of the base chakra being too activated and not having pulled up the enegy sufficiently. It got to the point for a time when every time I even thought about the Crown chakra the lower one would kick into gear automatically.
I'd like to come back to what you said here:
Bob May wrote:
This suspension of judgement is very important when speaking of stopping the internal dialog. Don Juan said it was more than just a curtailing of the words. When I have experienced this "suspension of judgement " many things that we take for granted have also become suspended because they depend on that "judgement" faculty. Depth perception, hearing and the ability to understand the spoken or written language are also suspended.
Immersed in a "flood" of messages (reaffirmations become constant) and too much information to take in. Surrounded by "animals," (people making animal noises and apearing as different types of creatures.)
...
But rather than a higher plane, I think it is more like seeing what is going on behind the scenes of this world. Maybe what don Juan called a "lateral shift" of the assemblage point.I am currently thinking about language and working on writing a reply to the 'Ancient Tongues' thread and this reminded me of a part where my thoughts went while doing so.
So coming from what you just said here, would you say that if one suspends judgment then one cannot understand a language that one actually should?
Yes. Reminds me of a flock of geese sometimes. They make a noise like human beings but there is no meaning there.
Cause this happened to me on more occasions - 2 that I specifically remember where no tiredness or intent to do so was involved. But I never looked at it as stopping the world. Though sure stopping of the usual AP world. In this sense it happened to me with my mother language and with a foreign language. The foreign language was the language generally spoken around me at that time, but I was was expecting to hear English.
After the initial flow of incomprehensible sound I intend to understand and I actually feel a switch/shift of sorts take place and then I understand again.
This is different than the state when we are tired and/or just stop listening to others. I actually waited to hear the sound/ waited for the person to start speaking and once he did I did not understand him . There were others talking around me just before this happened but I was not listening to them, so they were just sound in the background. The other instance was when I switched on the TV and heard gibberish for a few seconds until I switched myself to understand. In the TV case it was in my own country with my own language. I might be able to classify it as having suspended judgment / stopping the world because I might not have been expecting anything specific, whereas in the first example I must have expected a different language than what the person started to speak.
Don Juan told Carlos that stopping the world came a little at a time and then all at once. Carlos experienced many "little things" reaffirmations etc.
which don Juan referred to loosely as stopping the world but there comes a point in my experience when it all falls apart. A complete breakdown. Reaffirmations become constant and you find yourself living in two worlds at once. I don't recommend it,..especially if a person does not believe in a loving God of some sort.
All I am saying is that from my experience, the meaning of language falling away seems to be a signal of sorts that a person is crossing a specific barrier or veil.
The confusion of language at the tower of Babel was a significant place in human consciousness. As was the understanding of other tongues at Pentecost.
Would you say that the state when one is too tired to (or just decides one does not want to) listen and just lets language flow around without trying to make sense of it is close to stopping the world? One can just let the language flow in sound around them. Do not catch it with the intellect or whatever it is that puts words into meaning. Something similar, though different can be done with the sight, just de-focus, stop translating visual stuff into objects and things. I would call this not doing. But not doing is supposed to lead to the stopping of the world .
Yes, both gazing which puts one in that state of mind and sleep deprivation were both practicede by don Juan. Fasting is another method.
For me understanding language is a matter of AP. Each language has its specific AP. I will try to get into this in the 'Ancient Tongues' thread (sometime soon). So far I would say that the state of not understanding language is also a shift of AP, but to a different place, maybe it is what you say DJ called a "lateral shift" of the assemblage point. Not sure how to imagine it, but understand the world lateral to mean sideways. I would say it is a shift to a position that is further from the usual.
I think much of what don Juan called AP shifts happens because of feeling. Some people dance, some sing to bring on another state of mind. Maybe you do it by swithching languages and feeling with them.
My teacher used to say, "To have an experience once it is just an experience. To have it twice, you have mastered it."
He also said to repeat an experience, you remember the feeling.
I may not be understanding exactly what don Juan meant by a lateral shift but it has come to mean to me that it is not a "higher plane" experience, but what lies just beyond our five senses. A frightening chaotic world (maybe the sorcerer's description). Not a goal in itself except to show us that there is more to existence than we first thought.
From there we can compare and know that neither the world of sorcerers or ordinary men is where we belong or where we came from.
As a man of knowledge don Juan was trying to show that to Carlos not to trap him in that frightening place.
If you place the tree of life on the human body, as opposed to the universe as a whole, putting your consciousness on the higher centers/chakras (from the heart center upward) helps you to bypass the lower nature and experiences and experience something from beyond those lower realms.
To place your consciousness on the various centers, I believe, is similar to moving the AP Same results different schools of thought.
Bob wrote:
I hope this helps
Hi Bob, thanks for your reply, sure it helps. You basically gave me a recipe of what you find to be helpful. And you told me to concentrate on that upper part of my head while pulling up the sexual energy, which I have not done before. So I will try this.
After some practice you can move your awareness or consciousness to various places in and around the body. This awareness as I understand it is Me. So, basically I am there. From "there" I can pull the energy up. Or circulate the energy around my body which I am not too good at. It is good to not open one chakra more than others. It is also good to open the higher ones, (heart, throat, brow and crown,) rather than the lower (solar plexus area and sexual organ area.) I'm no expert and some of these lower ones are difficult to distinguish one from another. There are drawings and charts but some differences in location in them.
Form what I gather the goal is to have them all open but in balance.
I have not been meditating, but I know how to sit in one position for some time (not any position though and not sure how long, never tried measuring it). I can lie down and be still, if that can be done/if that still counts (does it?), it is more comfortable. I had times when I realized that I had been in the same position during the whole night..
My teacher used to advise against meditating lying down because it could tend to cause insomnia when you actually lie down to sleep. As far as position goes you just find a comfortable sitting position with your spine straight. You can tend to fall over after a time if you are not balanced.
The 1 thought/no thought thing I will have to try, I have not been specifically focusing on not thinking while sitting in one position, just during walking or just when doing whatever. What counts as one thought? For example 'life is beautiful' is one thought but it can lead to a lot of images and memories..
No thoughts would be just being. One thought could be like putting your awareness on crown chakra or it could be just rolling ideas about a project through your mind. Ideas just pop in that solve problems you are working on.
I have kept myself away from meditation because I had a sort of scary experience when I first tried it. I thought it better not to mess with stuff I do not understand . Maybe you can name for me what I experienced there.. To make a long story short it was like I forgot about myself, that I am me, I was in this vast realm where I just was and was not anyone really. I'd say it was a dark place (but not dark in terms of negative). I have not had any notion of being a being with an identity and as such I have not really had any conscious drive to come back to myself from that place. When I got back to my body/back to being myself I got frightened. I was not scared while in that place, but once I came back I was, because I realized I could have just stayed there and not even known that I am not being somewhere else. Not known about being the me /myself that I have a body/life/identity here. I think it was my tonal/ego that got scared, because it was like it was not really that needed, that it could just puff out of existence. My coming back seemed almost like good luck to me at that time.. I decided meditating was dangerous . This happened maybe 8 years ago. I have tried meditating a few times since (not more than 10), just in a kind of relaxing and quieting down way. I have actually forgotten this experience for some time.
The subconscious mind will play tricks on you because it does not want to lose control that it has always had. When we feel fear and other emotions it is actually a feeling in the body we are feeling and relating it to a past fear. When doing body awareness if we are deep enough we do not feel the body and so we do not feel fear. Anyway, just observe. That is what I was told for so long. You will feel all kinds of wierd things like your legs in different positions than you remember them being when you sat down to meditate etc. Just observe, no judgement, no worries.
I was also taught to open and close each meditation with a "protection" of sorts. We used the "Qabala Cross." It helps you to initiate the meditation and then close yourself down. It also helps to acknowledge a higher being to protect you while you meditate.
You do this by putting together the index, second finger and thumb of your right hand together and saying, "For Thine is the Kingdom and the Power and the Glory forever and ever, Amen." As you say these words you touch in turn your forehead (Thine), Solar Plexus (Kingdom), Power (Right shoulder), Glory (left shoulder) Ever and ever (circle above your Breast twice) and Amen (touch your breastbone.)
Other schools of thought use other symbols but something should be performed to open and close to separate the two states of mind and ask protection when entering into a "magical operation."
Just today I have encountered the term thymic chakra and not knowing much about chakras I went to google it to find which one it is. From the name I would have guessed it is the throat chakra, but I did not find that the throat chakra's alternative name was thymic. So I googled thymic and found out:
It is a chakra "located between the Throat and Heart chakras. Like the Base of the Throat Chakra it is an important activator of higher consciousness. " (http://www.kheper.net/topics/chakras/Thymic.htm)
Connected to the Thyroid gland. Supposed to have to do with Clairaudio,.. Hearing abilities.
So I guess what I meant before was the Base of the Throat chakra . Sure sounds like it: "Base of Throat chakra is located at the V-like notch at the base of the neck and top of the sternum (breastbone)" (http://www.kheper.net/top...ras/Base_of_Throat.html)
So just thought I would clarify that, since it presented itself to me..
Bob wrote:
You go through life more calmly and less ruled by emotions and lustful thoughts etc. And you begin to experience the world in other, deeper ways.I do not have problems with lustful thoughts but recently my body gets aroused for no good reason during an activity (that is not even remotely sexual) where I need to concentrate. So it is not like I see something/someone sexy or because I am close to someone or that I think of something like that, it just comes on its own, the body feels it and I do not have thoughts or images of sexual things while it is happening, unless I decide to act on it. It is somewhat of a nuisance..
I've had similar things. For me, I think that it was a case of the base chakra being too activated and not having pulled up the enegy sufficiently. It got to the point for a time when every time I even thought about the Crown chakra the lower one would kick into gear automatically.
I'd like to come back to what you said here:
Bob May wrote:
This suspension of judgement is very important when speaking of stopping the internal dialog. Don Juan said it was more than just a curtailing of the words. When I have experienced this "suspension of judgement " many things that we take for granted have also become suspended because they depend on that "judgement" faculty. Depth perception, hearing and the ability to understand the spoken or written language are also suspended.
Immersed in a "flood" of messages (reaffirmations become constant) and too much information to take in. Surrounded by "animals," (people making animal noises and apearing as different types of creatures.)
...
But rather than a higher plane, I think it is more like seeing what is going on behind the scenes of this world. Maybe what don Juan called a "lateral shift" of the assemblage point.I am currently thinking about language and working on writing a reply to the 'Ancient Tongues' thread and this reminded me of a part where my thoughts went while doing so.
So coming from what you just said here, would you say that if one suspends judgment then one cannot understand a language that one actually should?
Yes. Reminds me of a flock of geese sometimes. They make a noise like human beings but there is no meaning there.
Cause this happened to me on more occasions - 2 that I specifically remember where no tiredness or intent to do so was involved. But I never looked at it as stopping the world. Though sure stopping of the usual AP world. In this sense it happened to me with my mother language and with a foreign language. The foreign language was the language generally spoken around me at that time, but I was was expecting to hear English.
After the initial flow of incomprehensible sound I intend to understand and I actually feel a switch/shift of sorts take place and then I understand again.
This is different than the state when we are tired and/or just stop listening to others. I actually waited to hear the sound/ waited for the person to start speaking and once he did I did not understand him . There were others talking around me just before this happened but I was not listening to them, so they were just sound in the background. The other instance was when I switched on the TV and heard gibberish for a few seconds until I switched myself to understand. In the TV case it was in my own country with my own language. I might be able to classify it as having suspended judgment / stopping the world because I might not have been expecting anything specific, whereas in the first example I must have expected a different language than what the person started to speak.
Don Juan told Carlos that stopping the world came a little at a time and then all at once. Carlos experienced many "little things" reaffirmations etc.
which don Juan referred to loosely as stopping the world but there comes a point in my experience when it all falls apart. A complete breakdown. Reaffirmations become constant and you find yourself living in two worlds at once. I don't recommend it,..especially if a person does not believe in a loving God of some sort.
All I am saying is that from my experience, the meaning of language falling away seems to be a signal of sorts that a person is crossing a specific barrier or veil.
The confusion of language at the tower of Babel was a significant place in human consciousness. As was the understanding of other tongues at Pentecost.
Would you say that the state when one is too tired to (or just decides one does not want to) listen and just lets language flow around without trying to make sense of it is close to stopping the world? One can just let the language flow in sound around them. Do not catch it with the intellect or whatever it is that puts words into meaning. Something similar, though different can be done with the sight, just de-focus, stop translating visual stuff into objects and things. I would call this not doing. But not doing is supposed to lead to the stopping of the world .
Yes, both gazing which puts one in that state of mind and sleep deprivation were both practicede by don Juan. Fasting is another method.
For me understanding language is a matter of AP. Each language has its specific AP. I will try to get into this in the 'Ancient Tongues' thread (sometime soon). So far I would say that the state of not understanding language is also a shift of AP, but to a different place, maybe it is what you say DJ called a "lateral shift" of the assemblage point. Not sure how to imagine it, but understand the world lateral to mean sideways. I would say it is a shift to a position that is further from the usual.
I think much of what don Juan called AP shifts happens because of feeling. Some people dance, some sing to bring on another state of mind. Maybe you do it by swithching languages and feeling with them.
My teacher used to say, "To have an experience once it is just an experience. To have it twice, you have mastered it."
He also said to repeat an experience, you remember the feeling.
I may not be understanding exactly what don Juan meant by a lateral shift but it has come to mean to me that it is not a "higher plane" experience, but what lies just beyond our five senses. A frightening chaotic world (maybe the sorcerer's description). Not a goal in itself except to show us that there is more to existence than we first thought.
From there we can compare and know that neither the world of sorcerers or ordinary men is where we belong or where we came from.
As a man of knowledge don Juan was trying to show that to Carlos not to trap him in that frightening place.
If you place the tree of life on the human body, as opposed to the universe as a whole, putting your consciousness on the higher centers/chakras (from the heart center upward) helps you to bypass the lower nature and experiences and experience something from beyond those lower realms.
To place your consciousness on the various centers, I believe, is similar to moving the AP Same results different schools of thought.