Meditation

[Federica]

For me it's not an easy exercise, at first try it feels vertiginous. (For me) it stimulates a sensory parallel, like a marble run, rollercoaster or similar, which in turn makes it effortful to keep the eyes at rest. Here you can see why I say it's dizzying
For the same physical-like reasons, I prefer to move upward from the center. Moving downwards feels like an acceleration out of control, while moving up feels like smooth inertia. As is, it's not relaxing. It goes better with two workarounds:

- replace the 'marble' with a small wave in the path of the figure eight
- imagine the figure eight not as glasses, but inside the cortex

PS: I notice the exercise comes from the Bates method for sight improvement. I read Bates' book years ago - my sight is far from perfect - but I never had the patience and application to stick with the exercises and strengthen the eye muscles. It's interesting that the directions are very different when the goal is eye strengthening versus preparation for concentration. For the purpose of sight improvement one has to do what (I believe) should be avoided from a spiritual perspective, that is, moving the physical eyes.

[Cleric K]

For me it's not an easy exercise, at first try it feels vertiginous. (For me) it stimulates a sensory parallel, like a marble run, rollercoaster or similar, which in turn makes it effortful to keep the eyes at rest. Here you can see why I say it's dizzying
For the same physical-like reasons, I prefer to move upward from the center. Moving downwards feels like an acceleration out of control, while moving up feels like smooth inertia. As is, it's not relaxing. It goes better with two workarounds:

- replace the 'marble' with a small wave in the path of the figure eight
- imagine the figure eight not as glasses, but inside the cortex

PS: I notice the exercise comes from the Bates method for sight improvement. I read Bates' book years ago - my sight is far from perfect - but I never had the patience and application to stick with the exercises and strengthen the eye muscles. It's interesting that the directions are very different when the goal is eye strengthening versus preparation for concentration. For the purpose of sight improvement one has to do what (I believe) should be avoided from a spiritual perspective, that is, moving the physical eyes.

Yes, it is important that we move only the ray of our attention and not the eyes (although it could be challenging to decouple them 100%). If I move my eyes it is uncomfortable for me too. And also, it is true that the motion feels most natural slightly behind the forehead (remember the weightless point).
BTW I know the exercise from a spiritual context. As I was looking for a suitable picture I saw that it is also used as eye gymnastics. But from what I see, in these physical exercises the lemniscate has to be imagined few meters in front and much larger. So we focus our eyes at a completely comfortable distance. If we try to imagine the figure closer and closer it becomes very uncomfortable, just like when we try to read something that is too close. So the conclusion is that we indeed have to find the weightless point and relax the physical eyes, trying to move only our ray of attention. In that sense there's no need to imagine anything concrete in that point, neither marble, nor wave. We can simply focus towards the point, without caring what is there.

But speaking of waves, when I mentioned that we can still move the periphery even if our focus is fixed at the crossing point, I guess this peripheral motion can be described as the movement of tides. In a way, it's like our head becomes more heavy on one side, then on the other

[Güney27]

Cleric,

this type of exercise is really hard for me.
It was really hard to focus attention in this way.

The other exercises like the vowel exercises ect are more easier.
It is actually quite easy to concentrate on thought images.

The rose cross exercise is hard to, because I have the problem to get detailed pictures trough inner concentration.

[Cleric K]

Cleric,

this type of exercise is really hard for me.
It was really hard to focus attention in this way.

The other exercises like the vowel exercises ect are more easier.
It is actually quite easy to concentrate on thought images.

The rose cross exercise is hard to, because I have the problem to get detailed pictures trough inner concentration.

Can you be more specific, Guney? Here, we can break down the exercise:
1. You can do it as a regular eye gymnastic. Look at the wall and move the focus of your sight in the lemniscate shape. There's no need to imagine anything on the wall, just look at the wall itself but tracing the shape with your line of sight.
2. You can close your eyes or turn off the lights and act as if you are still looking at the wall and tracing the figure. If it is difficult to focus in space in this way, you can try to imagine that you are spreading your arm and tracing with your index finger. Your focus should be at the tip of your imaginary finger.
3. Do the same but act as if the wall is closer to your face.
4. Try it in the head area, slightly behind the forehead - obviously here you shouldn't count on your physical eyes (and if you use your finger you should be able to reach inside your head )
5. If it is difficult to separate your inner focus from the movement of the eyes you can try to trace the figure with your imaginary hand behind your head. This should help to give up turning the physical eyes because we don't know how to focus our sight on objects behind us anyway. But we can surely have spatial awareness of our finger if it is behind us.
6. Try to letting go of your imaginary hand and only leave the tip of your finger. Now you should be able to move that tip even in positions that normally can't be reached by the degrees of freedom of your arm.

There are many other things that can be experimented with but if you try with the above, would you be able to tell at what point it becomes harder? Or it is hard even at 1?

About the rose cross meditation, I think we have spoken before but it seems you are forcing yourself too much to visually see the symbol. There's no need at all to have it in vivid visual image, let alone a detailed one. The important thing is to live in the unspoken meaning: "I'm thinking the rose cross. I have thought about it many times, I have imagined its parts separately, I know its deeper meaning and feeling charge. All this work is present in my intuitive context. I'm focusing at a point and I know that in this point I project all this intuition, even though it's just a blurry spot. For me that blurry point of focus is just an anchor for everything I know and feel about the rose cross, even though it doesn't look anything like it visually. I'm not looking - I'm thinking. The import thing is to live in the knowing of what I'm thinking about, not about how the reflection of that thought looks like."

Of course, such thoughts are given only for orientation. We can use them to assume the inner stance but in the end we should really think the idea of the meditation and exclude everything else, even if initially it is only for few seconds at a time. If we think all the time "I'm thinking about the rose cross" then we obviously no longer think about the rose cross but about the fact that we thought about the rose cross an instant ago. We are already introspecting. Such introspective thoughts are completely normal but they shouldn't take so much of our time that in the end we're only introspecting and never really thinking the meditative idea.

[Güney27]

Cleric,

this type of exercise is really hard for me.
It was really hard to focus attention in this way.

The other exercises like the vowel exercises ect are more easier.
It is actually quite easy to concentrate on thought images.

The rose cross exercise is hard to, because I have the problem to get detailed pictures trough inner concentration.

Can you be more specific, Guney? Here, we can break down the exercise:
1. You can do it as a regular eye gymnastic. Look at the wall and move the focus of your sight in the lemniscate shape. There's no need to imagine anything on the wall, just look at the wall itself but tracing the shape with your line of sight.
2. You can close your eyes or turn off the lights and act as if you are still looking at the wall and tracing the figure. If it is difficult to focus in space in this way, you can try to imagine that you are spreading your arm and tracing with your index finger. Your focus should be at the tip of your imaginary finger.
3. Do the same but act as if the wall is closer to your face.
4. Try it in the head area, slightly behind the forehead - obviously here you shouldn't count on your physical eyes (and if you use your finger you should be able to reach inside your head )
5. If it is difficult to separate your inner focus from the movement of the eyes you can try to trace the figure with your imaginary hand behind your head. This should help to give up turning the physical eyes because we don't know how to focus our sight on objects behind us anyway. But we can surely have spatial awareness of our finger if it is behind us.
6. Try to letting go of your imaginary hand and only leave the tip of your finger. Now you should be able to move that tip even in positions that normally can't be reached by the degrees of freedom of your arm.

There are many other things that can be experimented with but if you try with the above, would you be able to tell at what point it becomes harder? Or it is hard even at 1?

About the rose cross meditation, I think we have spoken before but it seems you are forcing yourself too much to visually see the symbol. There's no need at all to have it in vivid visual image, let alone a detailed one. The important thing is to live in the unspoken meaning: "I'm thinking the rose cross. I have thought about it many times, I have imagined its parts separately, I know its deeper meaning and feeling charge. All this work is present in my intuitive context. I'm focusing at a point and I know that in this point I project all this intuition, even though it's just a blurry spot. For me that blurry point of focus is just an anchor for everything I know and feel about the rose cross, even though it doesn't look anything like it visually. I'm not looking - I'm thinking. The import thing is to live in the knowing of what I'm thinking about, not about how the reflection of that thought looks like."

Of course, such thoughts are given only for orientation. We can use them to assume the inner stance but in the end we should really think the idea of the meditation and exclude everything else, even if initially it is only for few seconds at a time. If we think all the time "I'm thinking about the rose cross" then we obviously no longer think about the rose cross but about the fact that we thought about the rose cross an instant ago. We are already introspecting. Such introspective thoughts are completely normal but they shouldn't take so much of our time that in the end we're only introspecting and never really thinking the meditative idea.

Cleric,

I will try the exercise again
and share my experience in a more detailed manner.

Quick question: how do this type of concentration, lead us to the experience of the real thinking process (tree metaphor)?
Is there anything in our experience, that gives us a way to understand conceptually what this process is like?

[Güney27]

Cleric,

It's even harder after this order.
I did it like this, I imagine that I place my hand in my head and then start making the movement with my fingers.
After that it just works itself out.

The movement is even and like a river in my mind's eye.
However, if I interrupt this flow, the momentum so to speak, I lose form and am “out”.

I often wonder whether I'm actually animating the movement or whether it's a passive image that I'm just highlighting.

[Cleric K]

I often wonder whether I'm actually animating the movement or whether it's a passive image that I'm just highlighting.

In a sense, there’s always something of both. Imagine that you project a movie on a brick wall. Then there’s something that comes from the light of the projector but also the structure of the wall modulates the reflection. This is only an illustration, of course, in reality we do not find thought ray and reflecting substance in such a nicely separated way. But still, it gives us some idea about the fact that we’re partly influencing the flow of becoming, partly perceiving it.

When we do something simple like the lemniscate movement, it can in a very short time become a mental habit. Then it is similar to the way, for example, we brush our teeth and think of thousand different things, then at some point we awaken to the fact that we’re done – the whole brushing has happened on autopilot. Then we can ask: did I will the brushing or I only witnessed its playback? There’s something of both. Similarly, simple mental activities can become like an ingrained habit for which we can ask “Am I doing it or just highlighting its playback?” This can go so far that we can even start thinking about something else while part of us continues to draw the figure in the background. These are things that we should be watchful of. It is especially important in prayer. Prayer can quite easily become such an ingrained inner movie that we just put on playback while our thinking wanders in quite different directions. Then we snap back and say “Oh, I’m done.”

To get some feeling for what it means to be present in the spiritual activity, try for example, to multiply in your mind two numbers, say 26 and 13. Unless you have the ability to see answers directly as ready-made images (as some kind of Rain Man), you’ll have to struggle. I guess you won't be wondering so much whether the calculations just happen and you only highlight them. You need to continually employ your thinking will in order to go through the mental states that will lead you to the answer. Few people would be able to do that out of habit and let their mind wander while the calculation plays back in the background. Instead, when we get distracted, the calculation stops altogether.

It is useful to get a good feel for the intensity of our spiritual activity when we have to strain in this way. We need precisely such intensity in our meditation (and prayer for that matter). It doesn’t need to be exhausting, we don’t need to feel miserable, but the intensity should be there. Even though we’re concentrating on a seemingly static thought, we must continuously replenish it, just like a movie projector at the cinema needs to flood ever new light, even if it is displaying a static image. It is in this seemingly static (concentrated) but ever replenished intense flow that we should spend some time. Just like when we calculate we have to strenuously draw something out from within our spirit’s potential which would otherwise never manifest, so in meditation we should feel that even though the point of concentration is static, through our intense focus something new continuously flows. The longer we can stay in this state (and with the appropriate sacred attitude, of course), the more we begin to recognize in flashes of insight how this flow, in which we live at every instant even in our ordinary life, is modulated by the most varied factors – perceptions, feelings, desires, ideas, etc.

[Güney27]

Doing the exercise again,I realized that it became easier when I tried to imagine holding a pen in my imaginary hand.

It is like an anchor for the feeling of controlling the movement.

Without anything it is almost not possible to move the attention.

[coexistence]

Hello All,

Using the Imagination to comprehend the existential reality is meditation

All that exists is lesser than the power fo imagination that a normal human being or homo sapien has.
Understanding this truth is the challenge that humanity as a species has been grappling with.

Meditation is focused attention to know something as it exists. Seeing all the prior and future forms of that particular element become possible by extending our imagination.

All that exists is something that we can know once we know our infinite power and the limitation of our imagination in relation to the static field of energy that coexists with everything.
That can be experienced and is know as enlightenment that comes as a result of focused attention or study or research of existential reality.

Hope this helps unravel the mystery surrounding meditation.


.

[Cleric K]

Such radiation of the exceptional state into life experience should also help us inwardly orient towards otherwise seemingly complex occult scientific ideas (that we otherwise feel we are viewing from the outside, lacking any inner relation to them). For ex., we have spoken before about the 'delaminations' of the whole Intuitive potential through the planetary stages of Saturn, Sun, Moon, and Earth (also recapitulated in the 'root races' of our 4th round and globe). We should consider what follows only to get a broad sense of the polarities that delaminated from the unified potential and are now nested within one another as Russian dolls - not in any outer spatial way, but entirely as inner temporal relations that are finally projected outwardly on Earth. Although this may be difficult, we can simply try to sense the inner meaning of such polarities. By consistently struggling to keep the connection to inner meaning, we are keeping something of the exceptional state within our intuitive context, since the inner meaning of outer perceptions and concepts always flows through our spiritual activity.

(I’m posting in this thread because it fits better the topic)

Ashvin, thank you for these concise explanations. The bold part is really key, and it reminded me of an exercise by OMA that I would like to share. Unfortunately, I can’t find the original text, so I’ll put it in my words.

The exercise is really a kind of prayer but with a more pictorial nature. It is based on the number seven and the colors.

First we try to grasp our own personal life. We imagine a sphere of experience (in which our whole body fits) filled with red light, which encompasses our life situation, our ideals, and ask Divine Intelligence to fill us with its Wisdom, Love and Strength, such that we can walk the luminous path of evolution. Of course, all the points can be complemented with anything more concrete, which we would like to address.

Then we expand our soul sphere, fill it with orange light, and imagine how we come in contact with our closest ones – children, spouses, parents – those who make up our innermost circle of souls. Then we ask the Divine to bless them, to pour on them Wisdom, Love, Strength, to help us harmonize our relations, to polish any misunderstandings, so that we can all work for the Kingdom.

Then we expand our soul sphere even further to include also all our friends and relatives. We imagine how the blessings of the Divine pour on them too.

We expand further to connect with all people from our nation. Here we can ask that politicians and those at key positions, where decisions can either bring good fortunes or demise, are inspired by lofty ideals. The ruling party may not be the one that we sympathize with, but we should still pray that they’re inspired by the good. As a matter of fact, the collective hatred of people towards those in power is very detrimental for their inner life. They become surrounded by these dark clouds and since most of these people do not have any deeper knowledge and the corresponding methods to deal with such inner conditions, they instinctively barricade themselves within the physical body. This has the effect that dark inspirations can more easily influence them because the person has no means of discernment, and they can more easily make bad decisions.

Then we expand to connect with the whole Earthly humanity. We ask that the Spirit who is above race and nation can reign in human beings, such that the blessings of Divine life can manifest through each one of us.

Then we expand to include also the Angelic hierarchies of the archetypal spheres, within whose consciousness our own is embedded, and who constitute the curvature of existence – the evolutionary epochs, the archetypal processes and forms. We ask that their luminous life can pour through us and also that they are blessed by the Divine who lives in them.

Finally, we expand into infinity to include the Divine and we ask that His Name is blessed, His Kingdom may come, and His Will be done.

Then we can finish by trying to feel together all the spheres that we have expanded through, resulting in endless white Light of Love and Harmony. We try to feel how these spheres can be concentric and musically attuned to each other, resulting in man’s consciousness lucidly living in the Cosmic. Just imagine how much of humanity lives entirely in their personal sphere! Even the relations with the closest souls are dissonant. We can imagine how if more people expand into this gradient of being, then we'll naturally synchronize our existence at these higher levels.



This is a simple exercise, but we might be surprised how effective it is. If we have never done something like this, we might be surprised by the state of expansion, peace and harmony we can achieve at the end. It is this state that came to mind when I read the bold text. This prayer is even more powerful when we try to experience the words pictorially. For example, when we’re on the second sphere, we can imagine within it our loved ones and picture how they are showered by vivifying light, healing not only the body but also the heart, mind, soul and spirit. When we pray that Divine life may pour through us, we shouldn’t be afraid to use our imagination. We can imagine our body and inner landscape as barren wasteland into which the rivers of Water of Life flow from above and whatever they touch turns into green meadows, flowers bloom, birds come and sign, until all our body and aura vibrates luminously. Everything can be felt as radiating health and harmony, like the joy we experience when we contemplate a healthy plant with abundant fruits. Of course, such visualizations shouldn’t become a goal in themselves (they can easily lead us into a natural psychedelic state) but should feel as the expressions of our ideas – our desire that our life could fit as a chord within the Divine symphony.

Here, at least in my personal opinion, the seven-foldness and the colors shouldn’t be directly mapped to our spiritual scientific concepts. I see it more as means to instill certain structure to our prayer. Such spheres of expanding consciousness and the colors of the spectrum, of course, have their archetypal meaning, but I think that the mapping would have to be slightly different if it has to be aligned with the hierarchies. Instead, the exercise is tied with our very human experience, which is also why it feels so accessible and powerful.