Cleric,Cleric K wrote: ↑Wed Jun 08, 2022 11:32 amAsking yes/no questions implies that the inquirer understands the two alternatives and knows them to be mutually exclusive. Unfortunately, I'm afraid that people simply don't even try to understand what it's meant with 'intuitive thinking'. In our popular culture, this is instinctively equated with thinking driven by mysterious feelings. We stand at a crossroad and say "My intuition tells me that I must turn right". But this is not in the least the intuitive thinking we're talking about. This is simply intellectual reading into inexplicable sympathies. There's nothing thoughtful in choosing the path in this way. We simply feel one direction to be more sympathetic than the other and our thinking simply testifies of this feeling. We haven't thought anything out, we simply say "I feel better about this direction, even though I have no clue why".
I'm not saying that these feelings don't have their rightful place and that they shouldn't be taken into account. I'm only saying that 'intuitive thinking' implies something else.
There have been so many attempts to explain this that I have little hopes that this time it will be any different but nevertheless, here's one more try.
In our modern intellectual consciousness we feel our thoughts as tiny mental sparks zipping around and coalescing into logical structures. There's a saying that we hear often here: "The map is not the territory". These assemblies of mental sparks are considered to be nothing but a map of the real territory - the true reality. I doubt anyone here would disagree with this comparison.
Yet where people disagree strongly is when it is suggested that these mental sparks are only flown off particles of actual currents of reality. Let's imagine the supposed real territory, the maternal Cosmic Womb, the Cosmic Waters, as the all encompassing loving embrace of the Divine Feminine. The map analogy represents the human being as a small sack of amniotic fluid, part of the Cosmic Fluid. This representation happens through assemblies of tiny fluorescent sparks within our local amniotic fluid within the sac. Seen in this way, it's completely natural to feel the mental sparks as only a quite marginal, almost accidental, manifestation of true reality.
But what if the sparking activity is fully legitimate part of the Cosmic Being? What if it is not merely accidental assembly of sparks that only serve to represent as a map the supposed real territory? What if when we think the sparks, we live in portion of the actual territory? What if the territory is not only the Cosmic Waters but also the currents of Cosmic Fire? This is the fire of the Spirit, which runs like electricity through the waters and sets them in motion. It's the active, Masculine Cosmic principle.
Here's a metaphor:
Cosmic Fire forms shafts of plasma. But we can also see that small packets of plasma get disconnected. These can be likened to our floating mental sparks which mechanically assemble into maps of the supposed reality.
Intuitive thinking can only be approached when we realize that we indeed use the sparks as map building material but in its essence, the thinking activity that propels the sparks is in itself something of the territory. It is part of the Fiery aspect of the living Cosmos.
Obviously, the great difficulty is that we don't see thinking as something laid before us. What we perceive as thoughts is only the effects of thinking. Now another analogy comes to mind: Sonoluminescence. This is the phenomenon of light emission when bubbles are imploded through sound. Similarly, thinking is like the invisible spiritual activity which speaks its Word through the waters and produces light phenomena - perceptible thoughts. If we can't distinguish thought perceptions from the invisible first-person willed activity which excites these perceptions, it's impossible to make a step forward.
What do popular teachings do? They recognize that the map is not the territory. Perfect! They recognize that the assemblies of mental sparks form a map and as such they are not the territory. They point at reality but are not themselves that full realty. Excellent! Then what do the teachings do? They say "These pesky mental sparks only stand on our way to reality. The obstruct our perception of the territory by overlying it with mental maps." Fair enough. And what is the offered solution? "Let go of the sparking activity". Well, OK. But in this way we also lose our point of contact with half of reality - the first-person experienced fiery aspect of reality, which is active, creative, which excites the waters and shapes the temporal unfolding of the fluid dreamscape.
This one-sidedness is so simple, so obvious, so eye-poking that I still marvel how people simply pass through it without even noticing.
So this is it in a nutshell. Our mental sparks can indeed be assembled into maps but the thinking activity which assembles them is also the immediate aspect of the Fiery Territory of the Cosmos. In our thinking we live in the inner reality of that territory. When thinking begins to assemble sparks into maps and contemplate them, obviously it builds a veil. Yet simply stopping any thinking activity, cuts us off the Cosmic Fire. We remain in a pocket of hazy amniotic fluid, we feel the pulse of the maternal heartbeat through the fluid and call that reality. But that reality can only become complete when we find the complementary Cosmic Principle which arts through the waters. We can only approach this Principle when we investigate our thinking - which is direct manifestation of Cosmic Fire - and in this way we find how it is embedded in the Cosmic currents, which art the Cosmos at large. In this sense, intuitive thinking implies that instead of throwing away the disconnected pockets of plasma in the above metaphor, we begin to discover the Thinking of the Cosmos, how it runs through us and energizes us, how our sparkling thinking is only a severely limited manifestation of the Cosmic Fiery currents, which meaningfully art the dreamscape from within. This feeble thinking activity of ours is destined to evolve into the magical force of the Spirit which stirs the World Waters.
Please read my question literally and stop strawmanning it into something other than I intended.
And you know this because you personally have performed the protocols and have consciously attained the awareness and experience? I plead for a simple 'yes' or 'no' answer.
I am asking whether the precise protocols were followed and the resulting experiences were obtained in the judgement of yourself or Ashvin according to your own precise comprehension and not according to whatever the key words like intuitive, imaginative and inspirative thinking might mean to me or Dana or more commonly in the culture. In the original question, I was being completely generous toward Ashvin's interpretations and asking if he personally performed the practices and consciously attained the spiritual experiences? (I'm still waiting to hear his simple response.)
