Essay: On Attaining Spiritual Sight (Part III)

[AshvinP]

For example, we can imagine the rotation of the imaginary steering wheel but in such a way that it feels as if it offers great resistance, and even though we are panting with imaginary effort it doesn't nudge.

Thanks for this addition, Cleric!

I'm not sure if you made it to Part V yet, but this is very similar to what I had in mind for the ship's wheel exercise in that essay, i.e. adding imaginative resistance to the lighting up of the rotations. Now that you mention it, maintaining the resistance such that the wheel doesn't budge, thus bringing our activity to the brink of imaginative rotation, makes the most sense (perhaps after one full rotation of gradually increasing imaginative tension). It is certainly my experience that the inner activity begins to feel more 'weighty' and concrete after this is prolonged in a concentrated state, as if we are reaching into a deeper scale.

I also see how this heaviness can be extended deeper by resisting the condensation of the 'wheel' mental pixels themselves, and how resisting the inner voice in particular introduces finer differentiation for our concretized inner gestures. I look forward to experimenting with this! As you say, it is somewhat advanced and will require great patience and persistence.

[Federica]

We may feel this ‘static noise’ if we try to pour our will through our facial muscles right to the brink of smiling, but without any noticeable movement of the face. If we can prolong that concentrated pouring of the will for some time, our inner gestures may feedback as a dim tingling sensation in that area.

It's interesting, as it has been mentioned before, how sometimes we forget something that we have found of value. For example, the 'igniting of the physical kernel' has been useful for me at the beginning of meditations. When some days ago I read this part of the essays and saw the above I was chilled how I had forgotten about it Then it also occurred to me that the exercise can be extended.

One of the effects of the original exercise is that we become more sensitive to our willing activity and the way it manifests in bodily perceptions. This refinement can go further. For example, we can imagine the rotation of the imaginary steering wheel but in such a way that it feels as if it offers great resistance, and even though we are panting with imaginary effort it doesn't nudge. This is an artificial example, of course, because in the original exercise we are willing against real constraints, it's only that we lower the strength of will such that our face, for example, feels insurmountably heavy (with respect to the effort we apply). Now both the wheel and the resistance are imagined by us. We can will against real constraints once again if we go even further and try to feel that the imagining of inner phenomena in itself requires that we overcome a certain very subtle threshold of effort. This, of course, already requires more advanced meditative skills (finer sensitivity). Nevertheless, it is possible to refine our intuitive activity to such an extent that we become conscious even of the effort necessary to 'light up' the pixels of the steering wheel or anything else (including verbal thoughts). Probably the easiest way to approach this experience is by weakening and slowing down our inner activity to the stage that pronouncing a mental word feels heavy (like maybe we could feel if we are extremely tired and can hardly speak). Of course, 'weakening' needs to be understood in the right way. Otherwise we'll simply succumb to our usual freefalling, dreaming through inner life. Things should be taken analogously to the original ignition exercise. It still requires full concentration, yet we intentionally bring the intensity to the degree that the imaginative 'pixels' only 'buzz' but do not take the 'shape' that we intend. It is important to be vigilant and see that we are not still 'thinking from the background'. That's why it is useful to engage also the inner voice and feel the heaviness of the 'auditory pixels' (in other words, we should be careful not to imagine one kind of words that are heavy while secretly speaking with another voice from the background).

I think this exercise can be considered as the ones that help us toward Inspirative cognition. Through this finer differentiation we become much more aware of how, even though we do not produce definite forms in the imaginative space, we are nevertheless still fully conscious and intuitively aware of what we attempt to impress in imagination but do not allow it to overcome the resistance. I find this exercise to be quite powerful... let's see how long it will take me to forget it So I'll be grateful if few months from now someone reminds of it

By the way, stumbling upon this post, I am reminded that you wished a reminder for this exercise.

[Cleric]

By the way, stumbling upon this post, I am reminded that you wished a reminder for this exercise.

Thanks! To be honest, I haven't thought about the exercise explicitly (so one may say that I again forgot about its concrete instance), but I think its general mood is apparent in the last three parts. In other words, I haven't forgot the general gold vein of the idea, which finds expression in different ways.