AshvinP wrote: ↑Wed May 03, 2023 1:30 pmFederica,Federica wrote: ↑Wed May 03, 2023 7:19 amDoes one have immediate awareness that this is what's happening? For my part I don't recognize the images I see as the inner side of my outward character or history. It's more similar to dream images that have no immediately clear meaning or relation. It might be for example the image of a beautiful tiny waterfall where the water makes 'unreal' slow-motion curls, similar to how they are pictured in ancient mosaics, or even in a Hokusai painting, and the fall of water produces a mist of tiny sparkles. But I have no clue how this might relate to the inner shape of my soul and how the shape came about. Other times I am involved in the images. But the content remain mysterious, I don't recognize it, I can't read relations.AshvinP wrote: ↑Tue May 02, 2023 10:19 pm Through imaginative concentration, we are retracing our steps and re-encountering the living contextual relations which brought us to that point, but now from their inner perspective. The relations of our personal soul life are the most proximate context of our concentration, so we re-encounter those first.
I was mostly referring to the underlying principle of meditation which seeks to approach and cross the threshold of death, after which we retrace our steps of life (among other things). This same principle holds good during sleep as well.
Let us think. We have our own daily cycle of life, which we will consider now, not in its correspondence to the Cosmos, but as it presents itself in man, so that we can also include those whose sleeping and waking do not correspond with the alternation of day and night — idlers as well as all those who do not live by rule! Let us consider this daily round of man on the basis already established, that is to say, representing it in thought as a line in which the points of sleeping and waking lie upon one another, as I have pointed out. There are many reasons, but one will suffice for an unprejudiced judgement to understand that we are bound to place the point of waking over that of falling asleep. Consider the remarkable fact that when we look back over our life, it appears to us as an unbroken stream. We do not feel compelled to regard life in such a way as to say: Today I have lived and have been conscious of my environment from the moment of waking; before that all was darkness; before that again, my falling asleep of yesterday was preceded by life, I lived again, back to the moment of waking; but then darkness again. You do not picture the stream of memory like this, you picture it so that the moment of awaking and the moment of falling asleep really unite in your conscious recollection. That is a plain fact. This fact can be expressed in that the curve representing the daily round in man comes out as a spiral, with the point of awaking always crossing the point of falling asleep. If the curve were an ellipse or a circle, then awaking and falling asleep would have to be separate, they could not possibly be joined. In this way alone therefore can we picture the daily round of man.
That is also related to why we do the backward daily review at night - sort of a preparation for what we actually experience during sleep. It does manifest to some extent in my meditative experience, but I imagine the manner of such manifestation can vary quite a bit. I am only at the very first stages and I can't say I have crossed the threshold. I also don't experience such vivid images as you are describing during meditation. Actually I find images are more forthcoming when I am getting sleepy while trying to meditate, bubbling up from my lower regions. That is when I stop, or generally I try to avoid doing meditations when sleepy to begin with. There is a certain mood which streams in through those states which I would call 'oppressive'. It is like my soul-life is being more weighed down by gravity and I am quickly losing consciousness.
For me, when in a wakeful state, it is more like the flashes of intuition that Cleric has described. Sometimes it is accompanied by actual flashes like rapid streaks of inner lightning. This is only after the thought-image expands to fill my inner volume and I manage to hold the concentrated state without grasping at the apple, i.e. analyzing the details of the experience, and thereby collapsing the whole state. There isn't an inner voice or anything which says, 'you have an antipathy for putting effort into your projects'. It is a much more organic and subtle process which carries over into the normal waking state - like seeds which are planted and grow days and weeks later. Perhaps something similar occurs through the images you mention. Through such experiences, I have come to realize that we are not only bringing the waking state into our periods of meditation, but are also bringing the meditative state more into our normal waking periods, i.e. spiraling them together or, conversely, awakening to their superposition. Not that we go around perceiving images or in an altered state of consciousness, but that our inner stream of will, feeling, and thinking is ennobled, strengthened, and enlivened.
In a general way, I would characterize it as the process of living life more lucidly, effectively, and lovingly. Even if we know nothing of spiritual reality and meditation, we naturally gain these ideal impulses through our cultural inheritance and socialization from parents, teachers, etc. We start to learn how to tame our passions, how to think clearly about problems of life, how to commit to our work, how to establish meaningful relationships, etc. Through the spiritual path, we learn how to discern all the daily opportunities we have to further perfect our latent ideal qualities, talents, capacities, etc. and gain inspiration to actually pursue those opportunities to their completion. We learn that our desires, feelings, and thoughts actually have the most causal power in our evolving experience of the World (within certain higher contextual limits). Memory becomes a tool to not only nostalgically reminisce about past events, but to learn about our core be-ing and thereby participate in manifesting our future.
So, to generally answer your first question, I would say it becomes immediate awareness that this process is occurring after we are accustomed to the organic rhythms in which these things unfold. But the relevant knowledge isn't immediately manifested in my consciousness at the time of meditation itself, at least not for me. It is a more gradual and organic process which manifests through the flow of life itself. We are not only accumulating knowledge of our soul-structure, but at the same time transforming our inner life to be in greater resonance with higher-order intents which structure our stream of becoming, so we begin to perceive these intents all around us and work with the progressive intents to the best of our ability. That is how we gradually transmute our past into our future, our Karmic destiny into our spiritual freedom.
Thank you so much, Ashvin! You have been able to translate things in a remarkably approachable and relatable form! (with this and each of your other most recent posts on polarity)
