Astral Arc (youtube series)

[Federica]

Ashvin,

Regarding the language tricks, I doubt there would be much value in such complication for you who are already experienced, but I don't know. It's just an opportunistic matter of finding and exploiting laziness as a counterforce, so for me it's not too difficult to let the words come to mind when they want to. I think the thought came indirectly from reading What Barfield Thought, and his language related reflections.
Regarding Eurythmy, is it a usual way to practice it, with prayer, or are you simply experimenting? It's difficult for me to imagine prayer in movement, in a similar way as it is for meditation. I would rather neutralize all sensory hooks. It's interesting, but don't you get distracted or drained by the part of attention that goes to the movements?

[Cleric K]

This morning I was trying to meditate on the Self - the higher identity who lives within us in seed form, whom we are to awaken to, so we can start being it in full awareness, and it can start steering our life - and I've come up with another metaphor for the process Cleric described above as zooming in thinking as in a fractal. I understand the zoom-in as bypassing the thought-phase, the thinking about the anchor of concentration (stage 2 in the Astral Arc step by step process) and maybe the analogy I have visualized today can illustrate a way to facilitate that process, by maintaining an inner space open for the zoom in to happen.

I start the meditation by means of the known Steiner verse, that I use as anchor: “More radiant than the Sun, Purer than the Snow, etc....”, so the anchor is audial - the imagined sound of the words - and/or visual - the image of the written words. I’ve been using the German verse, for two reasons: first, to come closer to the verse's archetypal value, by recalling the words as they were written; second, because for me the original words are a stickier, thus better, anchor point, to the extent that it’s more laborious for me to call forth correct German words compared to English. Hopefully, by the end of ths post, I will have made clear what I mean by this. The English words would be more familiar, they would flow into awareness almost by themselves and, in their rush and momentum, they would easily compel me to contemplate the meaning they convey. It's as if they would drag and whip the meaning, and I wouldn’t be able to control my thinking and move past it, zooming into the anchor. In a way, it’s as if the sensorial "forest periphery" Cleric speaks of is not only thorny, but also blown up by a breeze. It has momentum, and comes to my gown to tangle it, even if I hold it tight. So not only do I have to keep the gown tight, but I also have to find a spot in the forest where the breeze ceases. This I achieve by anchoring the meditation to the German verses, but obviously it only works if one is not fluent in German.

And here comes the metaphor I wanted to share, in case it can be useful to someone else. It’s as if, in that calm forest I am dwelling in, I have arrived at the shore of a tranquil lake, and I'm watching the shore. Some tiny tiny waves are quietly brushing the shore, bringing forth some small shells. The shells are the words in the verse. The tiny waves that bring them ashore are the metric energy of the verse, whose words, unlike in prose, are connected and cradled by an underlying carrier energy. Still, as I said, when I inwardly recite the verse, words don’t come to awareness super easily. Their shared energy isn't strong enough by itself to make them flow in cohesively, because it's hindered by my scarce language proficency. It's as if I looked at the shore, I looked at the shell pieces that come forth, and some pieces are missing. Effort is required to recall the missing words in the correct form and put the verse together, but here’s the thing: there are two ways to go about it.

One way precipitates thinking into the thought about the verse, impeding the zoom-in, whilst the other way is more conducive to going beyond the verse as anchor point. In the first way, I actively and energetically go about recalling the exact missing words. All my focus goes to the memory effort. It’s as if I lifted the gaze from the shore, from the small shells lightly oscillating in the shallow water, and walked in the lake, chasing the missing shells. If I do that, I will certainly find them, I will recall them from memory, but I will also become fully occupied with the activity, and ultimately remain captive in it. In the second way, I keep watching the few shells that have come ashore. The intention, and only it, is oriented towards the missing shells, but I resist getting sucked in the actual activity of chasing them. I am only open to their coming in, I know the verse will eventually bring them ashore, so I resist the recalling effort. The main difference is, in that in-between I have now opened an ideal space in which the anchor remain present, it still works as a supporting anchor - thanks to the tension exerted by the missing words-shells - but also doesn’t impose itself in all the captivating power of a fully formed sensory hook (the complete and functional verse) that my thinking would be unable to resist.

So basically the trick is to first make the seizing of the anchor somewhat strenuous, and then remain half-way, remain a bit lazy, or patient, or watching, in respect to that strenuous task, without rushing into the effort. Though I need to try it again soon, at this point the trick looks to me like a viable way to balance the traction coming from the anchor, against the tension created by the slow-coming words, so that I can remain conscious, but inactive, in the exact middle point between the two, hopefully able to listen to anything else that could breach into that floating opening.

Thank you for sharing, Federica!

What you are touching upon can be considered also from the aspect that whatever we can grasp at the focus point of our consciousness is always only a partial reflection. Maybe we can use the picture that I recently shared:



The thing is that even if we could arrange the shells perfectly, that would still be an incomplete picture. I think that what you have discovered has to do precisely with the need to come to peace with the fact that our consciousness is always open on one side so to speak (like this AI image I shared before).



The inverted cone symbolizes the intuitive context within which our cognitive process always exists. Let's take an example. We have to do something at work. We know what to do very well (maybe we have planned it extensively) and we want to make a reminder for ourselves. We can draw a random scribble on our notepad. Next time we see it, hopefully the whole ideal context will be evoked.

To realize how much we really take for granted, we can make a comparison with another person, a complete stranger. If we are to show him the scribble, to him it would be just that – a scribble. Then if we tell him that it is a reminder for some task at work, this will refine the intuitive context but it is still very general. If we have to make it more concrete we'll have to convey the nature of our job and the task at hand. If the job is not so trivial we'll also have to convey everything we may have learned in the course of several years in the university and so on.

The simple goal of this comparison is to help us appreciate how enormous our intuitive context really is at any point. Probably we have all met persons who speak in such a way as if it is expected that the listener should be fully aware of the context. Usually such people simply have very little sensitivity for this inverted cone of intuitive context. When they think and speak, the words at the tip of the cone make sense to them but only because of the invisible intuitive context. Then they unconsciously assume that if others hear the same words, the same meaning will be automatically conveyed.

The loosening of our preoccupation with the shells is a kind of coming to acceptance of the fact that these shells would mean nothing without the inverted cone of intuitive context. The problem is that this intuitive context is something imperceptible. For example, when we explain our job, where is all our knowledge? It exists only as a mysterious intuitive orientation within ideal metamorphoses.

If we understand this open-endedness of our intuitive cone, it should also be easier to understand the actual goal of meditation. We'll have limited success if we take the words simply as a garment for our meditative state. If the words are to come to life, they should relate to our living temporal existence, as the scribble in our notebook relates to our professional life. We should try to feel what it means to strive towards such qualities (more radiant than the Sun …). Of course, these qualities should not be sought as a kind of narcissistic self-complacency but as a necessity if we want to be in service of World development.

In other words, the thought-image at the tip of our concentration should always relate in some way to the widening cone of our whole temporal life panorama. The simplest is to ask: "Why am I at all doing this? Why am I meditating?" If we think about this, we'll be able to discern that some time ago we entered a different stage of our life. New things began to draw our attention, new ideas began to dawn on us and so on. So if we take a photograph of ourselves in meditation, this is much like the tip of the inverted cone. For someone else looking at the picture it's hard to tell if we're simply sleeping, thinking of problems, planning a vacation. But from within our intuitive context we have better understanding how this snapshot is nested within the waves of destiny – at least as much as we're aware that we're sitting in that position because of our developing interests in the spiritual.

Meditation is a process in which the depth of the cone becomes more and more musically attuned and it throws intuitive light on our soul content (including sensory perceptions). Our whole bodily state is a momentary scribble. The thought-image is at the center of that state. This whole momentary context is never complete in itself. That would be like cutting out a single frame from a movie roll and expect it to make sense in itself. That frame makes sense only within the waves of the holistic story, the acts, the chapters, etc.

This I believe is at the basis of your realization that the missing shells are not a problem. What counts is to fill our soul with the feeling (it can only be a feeling initially) that no matter how perforated the thought-image might be, it still makes some sense when placed at the center of our existence, as far as we feel it to be the present concretization of the waves of destiny. Conversely, if we have a perfect arrangement of shells and we feel tightly conscious of them, the effect won't be the same if we don't also have the feeling context that these shells are a snapshot of our evolutionary story.

Maybe we can sum it up like this. It is almost as if when we meditate, we should feel, at least as a hope, that what we're doing is a meaningful sentence in the living book of our evolutionary journey. We rarely have the means to know exactly how what we do plays out in the bigger picture but we can always fill our soul with the aspiration to do things in a good way. Then the concentration on "More radiant ..." should feel as something musically attuned to our story. The words should feel as making a mysterious sense in that unfolding, even if we know that we're still quite blackened prisms at this time. Then the loosening of our preoccupation with the missing shells is not so much for the sake of mechanical balance but in order to feel that the shells are only the tip of the intuitive cone of mysterious depth. This doesn’t mean that our concentration should become sloppy.

[AshvinP]

Ashvin,

Regarding the language tricks, I doubt there would be much value in such complication for you who are already experienced, but I don't know. It's just an opportunistic matter of finding and exploiting laziness as a counterforce, so for me it's not too difficult to let the words come to mind when they want to. I think the thought came indirectly from reading What Barfield Thought, and his language related reflections.
Regarding Eurythmy, is it a usual way to practice it, with prayer, or are you simply experimenting? It's difficult for me to imagine prayer in movement, in a similar way as it is for meditation. I would rather neutralize all sensory hooks. It's interesting, but don't you get distracted or drained by the part of attention that goes to the movements?

Federica,

I think the practice of eurythmy has evolved and spread into many different domains since Rudolf-Marie Steiner developed it. This particular practice is drawn from Robert Powell's book, Cultivating the Inner Radiance and the Body of Immortality. Here is a brief description from the book.

In the realm of the eurythmy, my particular focus is upon the cosmic aspects of eurythmy, for which I have chosen the name Choreocosmos (from the Greek meaning "Cosmic dance"). Moreover, as described in this book, I have also worked upon the development of eurythmy in conjunction with prayer and meditation. This aspect I referred to as sacred dance or the sacred dance of eurythmy.

Concerning the intention held in the moving meditation of sacred dance, where in prayer and meditation are expressed through movement and eurythmic gesture, we experience the vertical access of connection between Heaven and Earth with Sophia, the Divine matrix of creation streaming down from above, and Christ, the Divine power of Love radiating up from the Earth. The streaming of Sophia from above and the radiation of Christ from below unite in us centered in the region of the heart. From the heart, there can then take place a streaming out horizontally to all beings of good will, in the first instance to those closest to us. If we are engaged as a group in our rhythmic prayer and meditation, this comprises the community of those together with us in the circle of sacred dance. This horizontal stream from the region of the heart allows a peace bestowing influence arising from the sacred Union of Earth and Heaven, Christ and Sophia, the lamb and his bride, to flow out.

[AshvinP]

If we understand this open-endedness of our intuitive cone, it should also be easier to understand the actual goal of meditation...

In other words, the thought-image at the tip of our concentration should always relate in some way to the widening cone of our whole temporal life panorama. The simplest is to ask: "Why am I at all doing this? Why am I meditating?" If we think about this, we'll be able to discern that some time ago we entered a different stage of our life. New things began to draw our attention, new ideas began to dawn on us and so on. So if we take a photograph of ourselves in meditation, this is much like the tip of the inverted cone. For someone else looking at the picture it's hard to tell if we're simply sleeping, thinking of problems, planning a vacation. But from within our intuitive context we have better understanding how this snapshot is nested within the waves of destiny – at least as much as we're aware that we're sitting in that position because of our developing interests in the spiritual.

Meditation is a process in which the depth of the cone becomes more and more musically attuned and it throws intuitive light on our soul content (including sensory perceptions). Our whole bodily state is a momentary scribble. The thought-image is at the center of that state. This whole momentary context is never complete in itself. That would be like cutting out a single frame from a movie roll and expect it to make sense in itself. That frame makes sense only within the waves of the holistic story, the acts, the chapters, etc.

Cleric,

Thank you for another helpful elaboration on proper meditative technique.

I have a question here. It seems a common trap in thinking about the intuitive cone - the supra-sensible waves of destiny - will be to serialize these into the 'movie frames', which we inwardly voice to ourselves, when meditating. For ex. we ask those questions of why am I meditating and start thinking of all the various events and decisions which led up to our spiritual interest. Likewise, if we broaden out to 'why have I incarnated at this time?', we may think of the whole course of our current life - the time and place we were born, the family we have, the career we chose, the broader state of national and world affairs we were placed within, etc.

Have you attempted to build up a symbol for this nested temporal depth structure in meditation? Of course, whatever thought-image we are using at the tip of our concentration is already implicitly a symbol for this structure, but is there a way to make it more explicit so we can devote energy to the thought-image while simultaneously relating our effort to the intuitive temporal cone? Otherwise it seems we will break concentration on the thought-image when also attempting to think of those intuitive relations which inform our efforts. Generally I try to hold it as a loose feeling which permeates the meditation, which you also mentioned above, but perhaps it would also be helpful to 'encode' this feeling into the thought-symbol itself, similar to how we do with the Rose Cross meditation.

[Cleric K]

Hi Ashvin, that’s a great question.

I have a question here. It seems a common trap in thinking about the intuitive cone - the supra-sensible waves of destiny - will be to serialize these into the 'movie frames', which we inwardly voice to ourselves, when meditating. For ex. we ask those questions of why am I meditating and start thinking of all the various events and decisions which led up to our spiritual interest. Likewise, if we broaden out to 'why have I incarnated at this time?', we may think of the whole course of our current life - the time and place we were born, the family we have, the career we chose, the broader state of national and world affairs we were placed within, etc.

I know that you are fully aware of this but let’s just state it for the record – normal thinking, even though it is not the same as the real experience of the rhythmic depths, already probes these depths. So yes, it is definitely a trap when this kind of thinking continually masks the supersensible realities but this thinking is also a necessity because only in this way the intellectual ego can attune itself to the depths and experience their thought-translations, instead of being orthogonally cut off from them.

Have you attempted to build up a symbol for this nested temporal depth structure in meditation? Of course, whatever thought-image we are using at the tip of our concentration is already implicitly a symbol for this structure, but is there a way to make it more explicit so we can devote energy to the thought-image while simultaneously relating our effort to the intuitive temporal cone? Otherwise it seems we will break concentration on the thought-image when also attempting to think of those intuitive relations which inform our efforts. Generally I try to hold it as a loose feeling which permeates the meditation, which you also mentioned above, but perhaps it would also be helpful to 'encode' this feeling into the thought-symbol itself, similar to how we do with the Rose Cross meditation.

This is something very interesting to me because I’ve always been keenly searching for ways which can naturally bridge our ordinary thinking and imagination to the higher experiences. Of course, this has its flip side because the more the thought-images become almost literal expressions of the higher life, the more tempting it becomes for the intellect to operate with the images as realities, thus falling for the trap you mention.

With this out of the way, in my personal experience the symbol that most literally resonates with higher experience is the mandala. I imply nothing fancy in it. It’s even better to start with the simplest mandala possible – a circle with a dot ☉. This is really at the archetypal basis – the center and the periphery.

Of course, we can go more colorful than that and picture something like a lotus flower:



We can even set it in motion like in the video we’ve seen many times.

The mandala is a symbol for the totality of our conscious experience and which in its fullness is really an unique perspective of the World state. There’s a center because no matter where we are in time and space or even outside the bodily spectrum, we are always in the center of the experience. The volume of the mandala is the totality of phenomena that we experience. The further in the periphery we go, the more archetypal the forces are and thus common for more and more beings. As we know, in reality the periphery is not a spatial periphery. It penetrates everything, yet can be called peripheral because it is elusive to our clear intuition (cognition).

Now let’s consider things more closely. We have to keep in mind at all times the difference between the thought-image of the mandala that we build in our mind and the mysterious totality of existence of which the mandala is only a symbol. When we imagine a mandala in our mind’s eye, what we really experience is the configuration that we impress in the head organ. In very simplistic terms we can imagine that in the head region there’s free color and other types of ‘substance’ that we can shape through our spiritual activity in cymatics-like fashion. This is very simplified of course but still gives some indication.

The shape that we produce in our head-imagination is not the reality of the head organ itself of course. The latter we can’t really encompass as something that can be contemplated from the side. Thus it might be more appropriate to speak of inner perceptual space against which our spiritual activity impresses forms. Like mathematical space, we may say that this space has its origin or center, normally felt at the spot of the floating eye in the head. Potentially, this perceptual space is infinite but at our present stage we feel capable to impress forms in it in the head region.

In our age the head space is being shaped by all the sensory organs from one side and soul fantasies from another, so in general the results are quite chaotic. By imagining the mandalic form in our mind’s eye we instill certain order in the head organ.

Now the question is how can we grasp the reality of the mandalic experience beyond the head thought-forms that we are used to manipulate? We can gain intuition of this by turning attention to our life of feeling. These can be considered further in the periphery of the true mandala. Here it becomes critical to distinguish between the feeling experiences from their symbol which is still experienced in the perceptual head space (although, as said, this space is not limited to the head only). We have to be very clear about this: when we conceive of the feeling periphery of the mandala we have two aspects: one is the actual feeling soul experience and the other is the thought-like representation, the mental image.

When we see things in this way we should be able to sense how in thinking we continually perform an act similar to encasement, like in jewelry, wood or other material can be inlaid with some kind of metal. Thus we produce thought-shells in head space which are originally stimulated by other kinds of more elusive experiences.

The feeling periphery can be described as weaved of refined sympathies and antipathies. They are not simple sensations of attraction and repulsion but have an infinite variety of qualities. If we use the rotating lotus flower again, it can be said that this elusive periphery is the context of our continual temporal metamorphosis. For example, our daily life is driven by such elusive feeling impulses all the time. The things we do, the things we think are steered by such currents. Deeper still these currents go through certain rhythmic periods of our life, our moods, interests and so on. Ultimately it is all the rhythmic unfolding of destiny. Seen in this way, the mandala is simply the flattened image of the cone from the previous post.

So through the image of the mandala we have something which is still an impression in head space but in an interesting way (at least in my experience) it feels as if we can glide from the head image towards the soul periphery and somehow it still makes sense to call that a mandalic experience.

The biggest challenge is to develop the force not to immediately encase everything in head-space images. This we can achieve only gradually. Remember that head-space has a polar structure, which reflects in the symmetry of the brain and the fact that the ancients depicted the head organ with a two-petal lotus. For most people today cognition is enmeshed within these unsynchronized poles and bounces chaotically, as light trapped in between two mirrors. Concentration of thinking gradually leads us towards this balance – “If therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light.”

The harmonization and synchronization of the poles of the head organ doesn’t lie in that organ alone. Most of the reasons for the chaos there proceed from the astral body which streams into it and maintains the polarization. Nevertheless we can help ourselves even through somewhat mechanistic exercises. For example, we can imagine the rotating mandala in our mind’s eye similarly to the video where some parts rotate clockwise, others counter-clockwise. For simplicity we can take only two circles, like two dials.

It might be difficult to imagine simultaneous rotation of both flowers. We can find ourselves snapping into one or the other much like the bi-polar optical illusions. This can be alleviated with a trick. We can imagine using our hands to rotate the flowers. We can easily imagine how we rotate a knob with one hand or the other. Most people won’t have trouble to also imagine simultaneous rotation in opposite directions with both hands. We can take advantage of this fact and imagine that we rotate the concentric lotus flowers with our hands.

Gradually we can dissolve the hands and be left only with the rotation. As always, it is not the visual experience that counts but the living experience of the imaginative gesture through which we intend the movements. If we succeed in this, we may feel how it is as if our being stands independently of both rotations. It’s like we exist in a weightless spot and we’re not dragged by either of the rotations. Another way to conceive this is if we try to feel how our attention snaps to one or the other rotation. In the transition between the two is found the focused state where we have to settle. It is precisely this neutral, weightless point that exists in balance between the two poles.

Of course, such an exercise provides only a quite rudimentary experience of the balancing of head-space, yet we can use that point as support through which we’ll go ever further.

I repeat that the images that we imagine shouldn’t be conceived as something out of which reality will come out. They are only the impressions of our spiritual activity. Reality comes through expanding intuition of the totality of our experience. For example, as we concentrate on the image (by the way, once we find the neutral point it is no longer necessary to imagine the rotation) there comes a time when a pleasant tingling feeling begins to expand from the spot in the head. It fills the whole head, then also the body and even the space around it. As we have spoken many times, this is not mere feeling but the experience of the expanded head-space. Now our whole auric volume begins to feel as if reflecting thought-like phenomena, just like normally in the head we experience the reflections of our own thoughts. It is within this thought-reflective volume that we begin to sense the higher order qualities of what previously could only be crudely compared to sympathies and antipathies. Now these feeling time-rotations assume cognitive (intuitive) essence. In the most trivial case we simply begin to gain insight of our subconscious impulses, interests and so on, which so far have been unknowingly part of the rotations of our mandalic experience.

At this stage the intellectual trap is still present. The cognitive experiences in the expanded auric volume can still be snatched and encased by the intellect. That’s why it is important to resist this as long as possible. This is somewhat similar to learning a foreign language. Initially we feel the need to translate in our mind the words to our native language. But as we get better, the words begin to directly evoke the corresponding meaning and we can practically think in the foreign language. Similarly, there’s a tipping point where we become comfortable to live in the meaning of the deeper rhythms and only encase them for the purpose of translating them to our intellect and possibly other humans. As said in the beginning, this translation is not optional. Without it our intellect can’t make sense of the experiences, they remain inexplicable. The key is to find the gentle balance where our intellect can live in the higher experiences, flowing through the concepts that delineate them, yet resisting to encase everything in deadened thought-forms.

So this is in general how at the present time I feel the most fluid way to work with the thought-images in head-space which almost literally reflect the total mandalic experience. The whole key is in the ability to sustain the concentration in the floating eye and relax the periphery. From that point onwards there’s not much that we can do in a forceful way. We can’t simply force the Imaginative state. Instead, we need humility and patience. We’re like the virgin that has filled her lamp with oil and awaits in sacred quietness the bridegroom.

In my personal experience this is a very powerful method because we concentrate our mind on something which becomes a total mandalic experience – the center and periphery are always with us.

[AshvinP]

Thanks, Cleric!

Hi Ashvin, that’s a great question.

I have a question here. It seems a common trap in thinking about the intuitive cone - the supra-sensible waves of destiny - will be to serialize these into the 'movie frames', which we inwardly voice to ourselves, when meditating. For ex. we ask those questions of why am I meditating and start thinking of all the various events and decisions which led up to our spiritual interest. Likewise, if we broaden out to 'why have I incarnated at this time?', we may think of the whole course of our current life - the time and place we were born, the family we have, the career we chose, the broader state of national and world affairs we were placed within, etc.

I know that you are fully aware of this but let’s just state it for the record – normal thinking, even though it is not the same as the real experience of the rhythmic depths, already probes these depths. So yes, it is definitely a trap when this kind of thinking continually masks the supersensible realities but this thinking is also a necessity because only in this way the intellectual ego can attune itself to the depths and experience their thought-translations, instead of being orthogonally cut off from them.

Yes, that's always an important point to re-emphasize, since it can easily get lost in our meditative striving. We tend to view intuitive thinking as an oppositional process to the serializing intellect, when instead we should aim to put the latter into its proper role for our evolutionary stage, i.e. in service to the former and the super-sensible ideals we can incarnate through it. Throughout the day, I generally try to feel my state of being at any given time - perceptions, thoughts, feelings, desires (all balanced on the 'tip' of concepts) - as the tip of the time-rhythmic depth structure. I also think through the various temporal contexts which comprise that structure. We can do that easily enough for our strictly personal intentions which guide our days, but for the entire course of our current lives and epochs, we will also need to investigate spiritual scientific facts which surround the archetypal intents of Cosmic-Earthly evolution. If we make this a living habit, it should also help cultivate the feeling for the intuitive temporal cone expanding from our soul-center to the archetypal periphery during meditation. 

This is something very interesting to me because I’ve always been keenly searching for ways which can naturally bridge our ordinary thinking and imagination to the higher experiences. Of course, this has its flip side because the more the thought-images become almost literal expressions of the higher life, the more tempting it becomes for the intellect to operate with the images as realities, thus falling for the trap you mention.

With this out of the way, in my personal experience the symbol that most literally resonates with higher experience is the mandala. I imply nothing fancy in it. It’s even better to start with the simplest mandala possible – a circle with a dot ☉. This is really at the archetypal basis – the center and the periphery.

Of course, we can go more colorful than that and picture something like a lotus flower:

...

The mandala symbol is great! I know you have already gone over many of these points in other posts, so thank you for synthesizing them for us again. 

It seems that the harmonization and synchronization of poles of the head organ reconciles the discursive intellect, which teases apart the intuitive temporal context into decohered 'frames' for analytical convenience (including sensory impressions), with the instinctive wisdom of the reasoning mind which grasps that intuitive context as something nebulous but holistic. The intellect works against sensory-life organism to create friction within our intents, while higher reasoning works with the organism to attain a fluid transformation of those intents. Thereby we bring the clarity of waking intellect into the fluid and holistic movements of the higher reasoning faculty when steering through the expanded cone of the inner soul-life, and the living movement of higher reasoning into the intellect when we turn our attention to outer phenomena. During meditation, it helps us resist the urge to immediately encase our intuitive experience in thought-images. During outer observation, it likewise helps us practice 'pure perception' (non-encasing thought-perception) or otherwise bring more life into our thought-images of the outer world. 

There are probably infinite ways to characterize this polar relationship, but a poetic expression will help cultivate our feeling for the inner tension. 

"Two souls, alas, within me sink and surge, 
Each would be riven from its brother. 
One seeks to grasp in gross desire and lust, 
With clamorous organs all this world of greeds; 
The other strives up strongly from the dust, 
Aloft to high ancestral meads." (Goethe)

When we move beyond the head space into the feeling periphery, then it seems we are seeking to incarnate and shine the Light of archetypal ideas-ideals on the shadowy life of refined sympathies-antipathies adapted to mere personal tasks, reconciling the polar opposition at a deeper level of our be-ing. Thereby we rediscover-reinvent the personal interests in their objective cognitive essence, which necessarily goes beyond the sphere of our mere personal soul-life (our personal interests are always unfolding within the context of transpersonal intents, whether we know it or not). That gives us the capacity to begin using our past personal destiny as a means to shape the riverbed potential of our transpersonal future becoming - our amassed personal qualities and capacities can be progressively put in the service of higher ideals of collective Human and Earthly existence in ever-creative ways. We are then balancing the life of knowledge and will, or head and limbs, through the heart/chest.

None of this is a mechanical process of stitching together concepts and insights, because that mechanism is only characteristic of the space-bound intellect. It is instead a process of immersing ourselves in the experience of living ideas-ideals which inspire our mandalic temporal context and only later transducing them into the concepts of the intellect, like we normally transduce our thoughts into words through the larynx for inner or outer expression. Personally, in my own practice, I have found that the tendency for premature intellectual encasement is only loosened through persistent dedication to sacrifices of outer habits and preferences, so that the natural impulse for immediate sensuous or conceptual gratification begins to die and is gradually reborn on a higher plane as inner devotional capacity, restoring the virginal quality of the soul-life. It is almost as if the proper esoteric path makes sure I won't awaken into a higher sphere of activity where the depths of my soul-life becomes the objective environment until the latter is purified and prepared. In that sense, I can view all inner obstacles to meditative "success" as acts of Divine grace, prompting me towards the efforts needed for a more 'clean' awakening into the liminal spaces. And, as you say, we are always actually succeeding if our intuitive grasp of the totality of experience is expanding.

[Federica]

This morning I was trying to meditate on the Self - the higher identity who lives within us in seed form, whom we are to awaken to, so we can start being it in full awareness, and it can start steering our life - and I've come up with another metaphor for the process Cleric described above as zooming in thinking as in a fractal. I understand the zoom-in as bypassing the thought-phase, the thinking about the anchor of concentration (stage 2 in the Astral Arc step by step process) and maybe the analogy I have visualized today can illustrate a way to facilitate that process, by maintaining an inner space open for the zoom in to happen.

I start the meditation by means of the known Steiner verse, that I use as anchor: “More radiant than the Sun, Purer than the Snow, etc....”, so the anchor is audial - the imagined sound of the words - and/or visual - the image of the written words. I’ve been using the German verse, for two reasons: first, to come closer to the verse's archetypal value, by recalling the words as they were written; second, because for me the original words are a stickier, thus better, anchor point, to the extent that it’s more laborious for me to call forth correct German words compared to English. Hopefully, by the end of ths post, I will have made clear what I mean by this. The English words would be more familiar, they would flow into awareness almost by themselves and, in their rush and momentum, they would easily compel me to contemplate the meaning they convey. It's as if they would drag and whip the meaning, and I wouldn’t be able to control my thinking and move past it, zooming into the anchor. In a way, it’s as if the sensorial "forest periphery" Cleric speaks of is not only thorny, but also blown up by a breeze. It has momentum, and comes to my gown to tangle it, even if I hold it tight. So not only do I have to keep the gown tight, but I also have to find a spot in the forest where the breeze ceases. This I achieve by anchoring the meditation to the German verses, but obviously it only works if one is not fluent in German.

And here comes the metaphor I wanted to share, in case it can be useful to someone else. It’s as if, in that calm forest I am dwelling in, I have arrived at the shore of a tranquil lake, and I'm watching the shore. Some tiny tiny waves are quietly brushing the shore, bringing forth some small shells. The shells are the words in the verse. The tiny waves that bring them ashore are the metric energy of the verse, whose words, unlike in prose, are connected and cradled by an underlying carrier energy. Still, as I said, when I inwardly recite the verse, words don’t come to awareness super easily. Their shared energy isn't strong enough by itself to make them flow in cohesively, because it's hindered by my scarce language proficency. It's as if I looked at the shore, I looked at the shell pieces that come forth, and some pieces are missing. Effort is required to recall the missing words in the correct form and put the verse together, but here’s the thing: there are two ways to go about it.

One way precipitates thinking into the thought about the verse, impeding the zoom-in, whilst the other way is more conducive to going beyond the verse as anchor point. In the first way, I actively and energetically go about recalling the exact missing words. All my focus goes to the memory effort. It’s as if I lifted the gaze from the shore, from the small shells lightly oscillating in the shallow water, and walked in the lake, chasing the missing shells. If I do that, I will certainly find them, I will recall them from memory, but I will also become fully occupied with the activity, and ultimately remain captive in it. In the second way, I keep watching the few shells that have come ashore. The intention, and only it, is oriented towards the missing shells, but I resist getting sucked in the actual activity of chasing them. I am only open to their coming in, I know the verse will eventually bring them ashore, so I resist the recalling effort. The main difference is, in that in-between I have now opened an ideal space in which the anchor remain present, it still works as a supporting anchor - thanks to the tension exerted by the missing words-shells - but also doesn’t impose itself in all the captivating power of a fully formed sensory hook (the complete and functional verse) that my thinking would be unable to resist.

So basically the trick is to first make the seizing of the anchor somewhat strenuous, and then remain half-way, remain a bit lazy, or patient, or watching, in respect to that strenuous task, without rushing into the effort. Though I need to try it again soon, at this point the trick looks to me like a viable way to balance the traction coming from the anchor, against the tension created by the slow-coming words, so that I can remain conscious, but inactive, in the exact middle point between the two, hopefully able to listen to anything else that could breach into that floating opening.

Thank you for sharing, Federica!

What you are touching upon can be considered also from the aspect that whatever we can grasp at the focus point of our consciousness is always only a partial reflection. Maybe we can use the picture that I recently shared:



The thing is that even if we could arrange the shells perfectly, that would still be an incomplete picture. I think that what you have discovered has to do precisely with the need to come to peace with the fact that our consciousness is always open on one side so to speak (like this AI image I shared before).



The inverted cone symbolizes the intuitive context within which our cognitive process always exists. Let's take an example. We have to do something at work. We know what to do very well (maybe we have planned it extensively) and we want to make a reminder for ourselves. We can draw a random scribble on our notepad. Next time we see it, hopefully the whole ideal context will be evoked.

To realize how much we really take for granted, we can make a comparison with another person, a complete stranger. If we are to show him the scribble, to him it would be just that – a scribble. Then if we tell him that it is a reminder for some task at work, this will refine the intuitive context but it is still very general. If we have to make it more concrete we'll have to convey the nature of our job and the task at hand. If the job is not so trivial we'll also have to convey everything we may have learned in the course of several years in the university and so on.

The simple goal of this comparison is to help us appreciate how enormous our intuitive context really is at any point. Probably we have all met persons who speak in such a way as if it is expected that the listener should be fully aware of the context. Usually such people simply have very little sensitivity for this inverted cone of intuitive context. When they think and speak, the words at the tip of the cone make sense to them but only because of the invisible intuitive context. Then they unconsciously assume that if others hear the same words, the same meaning will be automatically conveyed.

The loosening of our preoccupation with the shells is a kind of coming to acceptance of the fact that these shells would mean nothing without the inverted cone of intuitive context. The problem is that this intuitive context is something imperceptible. For example, when we explain our job, where is all our knowledge? It exists only as a mysterious intuitive orientation within ideal metamorphoses.

If we understand this open-endedness of our intuitive cone, it should also be easier to understand the actual goal of meditation. We'll have limited success if we take the words simply as a garment for our meditative state. If the words are to come to life, they should relate to our living temporal existence, as the scribble in our notebook relates to our professional life. We should try to feel what it means to strive towards such qualities (more radiant than the Sun …). Of course, these qualities should not be sought as a kind of narcissistic self-complacency but as a necessity if we want to be in service of World development.

In other words, the thought-image at the tip of our concentration should always relate in some way to the widening cone of our whole temporal life panorama. The simplest is to ask: "Why am I at all doing this? Why am I meditating?" If we think about this, we'll be able to discern that some time ago we entered a different stage of our life. New things began to draw our attention, new ideas began to dawn on us and so on. So if we take a photograph of ourselves in meditation, this is much like the tip of the inverted cone. For someone else looking at the picture it's hard to tell if we're simply sleeping, thinking of problems, planning a vacation. But from within our intuitive context we have better understanding how this snapshot is nested within the waves of destiny – at least as much as we're aware that we're sitting in that position because of our developing interests in the spiritual.

Meditation is a process in which the depth of the cone becomes more and more musically attuned and it throws intuitive light on our soul content (including sensory perceptions). Our whole bodily state is a momentary scribble. The thought-image is at the center of that state. This whole momentary context is never complete in itself. That would be like cutting out a single frame from a movie roll and expect it to make sense in itself. That frame makes sense only within the waves of the holistic story, the acts, the chapters, etc.

This I believe is at the basis of your realization that the missing shells are not a problem. What counts is to fill our soul with the feeling (it can only be a feeling initially) that no matter how perforated the thought-image might be, it still makes some sense when placed at the center of our existence, as far as we feel it to be the present concretization of the waves of destiny. Conversely, if we have a perfect arrangement of shells and we feel tightly conscious of them, the effect won't be the same if we don't also have the feeling context that these shells are a snapshot of our evolutionary story.

Maybe we can sum it up like this. It is almost as if when we meditate, we should feel, at least as a hope, that what we're doing is a meaningful sentence in the living book of our evolutionary journey. We rarely have the means to know exactly how what we do plays out in the bigger picture but we can always fill our soul with the aspiration to do things in a good way. Then the concentration on "More radiant ..." should feel as something musically attuned to our story. The words should feel as making a mysterious sense in that unfolding, even if we know that we're still quite blackened prisms at this time. Then the loosening of our preoccupation with the missing shells is not so much for the sake of mechanical balance but in order to feel that the shells are only the tip of the intuitive cone of mysterious depth. This doesn’t mean that our concentration should become sloppy.

Thank you, CIeric! I can follow, it’s perfectly explained, and very relatable. I haven’t had a chance to try and practice this meditation again, and now I can’t precisely remember the impressions behind my post anymore. I think I was merely trying to remain in some form of reflective state, with no idea where to take the slowdown and the open endedness, so I’m thankful for your indications. Next time, I will try to allow the connection between the verse and the concentric individual context around it to condense within that space.

[Federica]

Hi Ashvin, that’s a great question.

I have a question here. It seems a common trap in thinking about the intuitive cone - the supra-sensible waves of destiny - will be to serialize these into the 'movie frames', which we inwardly voice to ourselves, when meditating. For ex. we ask those questions of why am I meditating and start thinking of all the various events and decisions which led up to our spiritual interest. Likewise, if we broaden out to 'why have I incarnated at this time?', we may think of the whole course of our current life - the time and place we were born, the family we have, the career we chose, the broader state of national and world affairs we were placed within, etc.

I know that you are fully aware of this but let’s just state it for the record – normal thinking, even though it is not the same as the real experience of the rhythmic depths, already probes these depths. So yes, it is definitely a trap when this kind of thinking continually masks the supersensible realities but this thinking is also a necessity because only in this way the intellectual ego can attune itself to the depths and experience their thought-translations, instead of being orthogonally cut off from them.

Have you attempted to build up a symbol for this nested temporal depth structure in meditation? Of course, whatever thought-image we are using at the tip of our concentration is already implicitly a symbol for this structure, but is there a way to make it more explicit so we can devote energy to the thought-image while simultaneously relating our effort to the intuitive temporal cone? Otherwise it seems we will break concentration on the thought-image when also attempting to think of those intuitive relations which inform our efforts. Generally I try to hold it as a loose feeling which permeates the meditation, which you also mentioned above, but perhaps it would also be helpful to 'encode' this feeling into the thought-symbol itself, similar to how we do with the Rose Cross meditation.

This is something very interesting to me because I’ve always been keenly searching for ways which can naturally bridge our ordinary thinking and imagination to the higher experiences. Of course, this has its flip side because the more the thought-images become almost literal expressions of the higher life, the more tempting it becomes for the intellect to operate with the images as realities, thus falling for the trap you mention.

With this out of the way, in my personal experience the symbol that most literally resonates with higher experience is the mandala. I imply nothing fancy in it. It’s even better to start with the simplest mandala possible – a circle with a dot ☉. This is really at the archetypal basis – the center and the periphery.

Of course, we can go more colorful than that and picture something like a lotus flower:



We can even set it in motion like in the video we’ve seen many times.

The mandala is a symbol for the totality of our conscious experience and which in its fullness is really an unique perspective of the World state. There’s a center because no matter where we are in time and space or even outside the bodily spectrum, we are always in the center of the experience. The volume of the mandala is the totality of phenomena that we experience. The further in the periphery we go, the more archetypal the forces are and thus common for more and more beings. As we know, in reality the periphery is not a spatial periphery. It penetrates everything, yet can be called peripheral because it is elusive to our clear intuition (cognition).

Now let’s consider things more closely. We have to keep in mind at all times the difference between the thought-image of the mandala that we build in our mind and the mysterious totality of existence of which the mandala is only a symbol. When we imagine a mandala in our mind’s eye, what we really experience is the configuration that we impress in the head organ. In very simplistic terms we can imagine that in the head region there’s free color and other types of ‘substance’ that we can shape through our spiritual activity in cymatics-like fashion. This is very simplified of course but still gives some indication.

The shape that we produce in our head-imagination is not the reality of the head organ itself of course. The latter we can’t really encompass as something that can be contemplated from the side. Thus it might be more appropriate to speak of inner perceptual space against which our spiritual activity impresses forms. Like mathematical space, we may say that this space has its origin or center, normally felt at the spot of the floating eye in the head. Potentially, this perceptual space is infinite but at our present stage we feel capable to impress forms in it in the head region.

In our age the head space is being shaped by all the sensory organs from one side and soul fantasies from another, so in general the results are quite chaotic. By imagining the mandalic form in our mind’s eye we instill certain order in the head organ.

Now the question is how can we grasp the reality of the mandalic experience beyond the head thought-forms that we are used to manipulate? We can gain intuition of this by turning attention to our life of feeling. These can be considered further in the periphery of the true mandala. Here it becomes critical to distinguish between the feeling experiences from their symbol which is still experienced in the perceptual head space (although, as said, this space is not limited to the head only). We have to be very clear about this: when we conceive of the feeling periphery of the mandala we have two aspects: one is the actual feeling soul experience and the other is the thought-like representation, the mental image.

When we see things in this way we should be able to sense how in thinking we continually perform an act similar to encasement, like in jewelry, wood or other material can be inlaid with some kind of metal. Thus we produce thought-shells in head space which are originally stimulated by other kinds of more elusive experiences.

The feeling periphery can be described as weaved of refined sympathies and antipathies. They are not simple sensations of attraction and repulsion but have an infinite variety of qualities. If we use the rotating lotus flower again, it can be said that this elusive periphery is the context of our continual temporal metamorphosis. For example, our daily life is driven by such elusive feeling impulses all the time. The things we do, the things we think are steered by such currents. Deeper still these currents go through certain rhythmic periods of our life, our moods, interests and so on. Ultimately it is all the rhythmic unfolding of destiny. Seen in this way, the mandala is simply the flattened image of the cone from the previous post.

(...)

Cleric, when I read Ashvin’s question and your reply, I am under the impression that you're saying a mandala meditation is better, or preferred, or more insightful than a meditation on a verse, or at least that the question can hardly be answered within the “more radiant than the sun” meditation. I’m sure I am misunderstanding, but how? In general I have difficulties following the exposition in this post. The underlined below for example:

"The volume of the mandala is the totality of phenomena that we experience. The further in the periphery we go, the more archetypal the forces are and thus common for more and more beings. As we know, in reality the periphery is not a spatial periphery. It penetrates everything, yet can be called peripheral because it is elusive to our clear intuition (cognition)."

Here:

“Now let’s consider things more closely. We have to keep in mind at all times the difference between the thought-image of the mandala that we build in our mind and the mysterious totality of existence of which the mandala is only a symbol.”

I don’t understand the risk. Is it possible to believe the mandala as thought-image to be the totality of existence itself? And why speaking of head space and head-imagination, rather than, as usual, thinking and feeling?


"how can we grasp the reality of the mandalic experience beyond the head thought-forms that we are used to manipulate? We can gain intuition of this by turning attention to our life of feeling. These can be considered further in the periphery of the true mandala. Here it becomes critical to distinguish between the feeling experiences from their symbol which is still experienced in the perceptual head space (although, as said, this space is not limited to the head only)."


I have read it multiple times, but I can’t follow where it is going. Why feelings are more in the periphery? Is it simply another way to say that we have less control on our life of feelings than thinking, or as Ashvin usually says, that we dream through it? And is this encasement the same thing we have commonly referred to in phenomenology of cognition as a thought perceptions of feeling, or thought-images of feeling? Also, that feelings can be described as weaved of refined sympathies and antipathies: when we, for example, want to fill our heart with feelings of awe, reverence, humility and love, aren’t we aspiring to go beyond our sympathies and antipathies?


Maybe all this is simply the reflection of the standard chaotic mix you speak of. I do realize a big variance in how much I have to struggle on different days. Logically, I should just try this meditation, and see whether the mandala can instill certain order in my head. This was indeed one of the few ideas I clearly understood in this post

.

[AshvinP]

Cleric, when I read Ashvin’s question and your reply, I am under the impression that you're saying a mandala meditation is better, or preferred, or more insightful than a meditation on a verse, or at least that the question can hardly be answered within the “more radiant than the sun” meditation. I’m sure I am misunderstanding, but how?

Federica,

On the question above, I had asked specifically for a meditative symbol that most 'explicitly' reflects the intuitive temporal context in which the meditation is taking place. So that is why the Mandala symbol arose, because it is the closest spatial approximation to the purely temporal (inner) context. I don't think he is saying it is generally better or more preferred than other symbols. If anything, it is more preferred by me in the context of keeping the intuitive temporal structure in consciousness during the meditation. Although I haven't been able to work with it much yet and my preference might change after doing so, if it proves less effective for that aim than other verses/images.

It is really an individual question what is best, because some people may have little problem with keeping that context in consciousness while using another verse or image. The only 'rules' for what symbols to use is generally that it should be something unfamiliar, i.e. not drawn from normal sensory perception or memory, and it should be simple enough to reconstruct with each meditation without disrupting the process or sucking us into the details. Ultimately, we use the symbols as a helpful crutch for steering our concentration towards living ideals, but aim to release them from that role after some time. With practice, we may even be able to start the concentration and expand it into the intuitive temporal cone without using any symbols.

[Federica]

Cleric, when I read Ashvin’s question and your reply, I am under the impression that you're saying a mandala meditation is better, or preferred, or more insightful than a meditation on a verse, or at least that the question can hardly be answered within the “more radiant than the sun” meditation. I’m sure I am misunderstanding, but how?

Federica,

On the question above, I had asked specifically for a meditative symbol that most 'explicitly' reflects the intuitive temporal context in which the meditation is taking place. So that is why the Mandala symbol arose, because it is the closest spatial approximation to the purely temporal (inner) context. I don't think he is saying it is generally better or more preferred than other symbols. If anything, it is more preferred by me in the context of keeping the intuitive temporal structure in consciousness during the meditation. Although I haven't been able to work with it much yet and my preference might change after doing so, if it proves less effective for that aim than other verses/images.

It is really an individual question what is best, because some people may have little problem with keeping that context in consciousness while using another verse or image. The only 'rules' for what symbols to use is generally that it should be something unfamiliar, i.e. not drawn from normal sensory perception or memory, and it should be simple enough to reconstruct with each meditation without disrupting the process or sucking us into the details. Ultimately, we use the symbols as a helpful crutch for steering our concentration towards living ideals, but aim to release them from that role after some time. With practice, we may even be able to start the concentration and expand it into the intuitive temporal cone without using any symbols.

Thanks, Ashvin, I see. I understood that you were looking for a means not to think about serialized answers, or occurrencies related to the question "Why am I meditanting?" emerging from the verse meditation based on the known Steiner verse. But now I see. Thanks.