What's It like To Be Me?

So what is it like to be me? You may ask.
I really don't know if I'm up to the task of
Explaining again for the umpteenth time,
Especially in this example of metered rhyme,

But yes, well.. imagine that you're body's a sphere
Of invisible, transparent energy rare.
I can feel you with my mind that travels in this sphere;
I can feel your elation, your anger, your fear.

I get concepts that form with a liquid ambrosia,
New science emerging from my neural exposure
To Prana that flows up my spine and into my brain,
A pleasurable warmth, a gentle rain.

I feel you, I hear your, your voice and your thoughts,
I see another world together with this one, but it's not
The same. It is illumined with energy intrinsic,
The glowing radiance of all things existent.

When it comes to people I'm different, it's true.
You're not me and I'm not you.
A fish out of water, perhaps you believe,
But let me modify that belief and relieve

You of any doubt and tension that comes with your being,
I'm you, just evolved in an existential dream.

~ Neil Sinclair

PS. I hope the reader understands the humor of this poem...

The Four Dhyanas

In my previous post, I spoke about anapana, or “tying consciousness to the breath.” Anapana, or watching the breath, represents the beginning stage of the first of four dhyanas. What are dhyanas? Put simply, they represent the stages or progressions in meditative absorption.
  

According to the sutra, the first stage is marked by awareness and contemplation. Here “awareness” means the condition of physiological feeling and sensitivity to all that is going on internally. “Contemplation” means the condition of psychological awareness, knowing the coming and going of every thought. For me, it is as if my outward senses have been turned inward.

At the beginning of my daily meditation, there are certain things that I practice that have the effect of releasing me from wandering passions, desires, and unwholesome thoughts while moving me towards a joyful interest in what I am doing and a sense of well-being.

I start by listening to Santam Kaur’s song Ong Namo, the words that begin the centering process:

Ong Namo, Guru Dav, Namo,
Oh my Beloved, Kindness of the Heart, Breath of Life, I bow to You.
Divine Teacher, Beloved Friend, I bow to you again and again.

During the course of this song, I am able to move away from the exterior to become very aware of everything that is happening internally. At one point in the song, I direct my intention to the chakra areas and silently repeat the following sounds as my attention is given to each chakra starting with the root and emphasizing the Anahata or heart chakra: LAM, VAM, RAM, YAM - YAM, HAM, SHAM, CHREE-OM.

   

The second thing I do consistently and find very useful is to visualize the subtle body with its three main channels. The larger central channel begins at ajna chakra (third eye) runs over the crown of the head and down to the Svadhisthana or Sacral chakra. It’s exterior is pale blue with a reddish interior color. Starting at the inner nostrils and running parallel and on either side of the central channel are the smaller channels connected with the nostrils. The one on the right is red, and the other white. At each chakra point, starting at the crown, these two smaller channels cross over the larger central channel, one from the left, and the other from the right, curving around and returning back to their original position, but forming a loop or knot. At the Anahata or heart chakra, they loop three times, then continue this course until they reach the end at Svadhisthana or Sacral chakra.
  

In the practice of tying consciousness to breath (Anapana), on the inhale, I follow the breath from the nostrils, down the two smaller channels to the Svadhisthana or sacral chakras to the base of the central channel. On the exhale, I follow the breath up the central channel to the crown. I’m not sure of the exact point of connection with the central channel on the exhale, however, the breath seems to always follow my intention in this regard. In the tantra, this is called “Vase” breathing meditation, and is described is much more detail there.

Other Anapana practice that I do consistently at the beginning of my meditation period is alternating nostril breathing. I don’t cover a nostril as suggested for this practice. Directing the breath by intention does the same thing and keeps it simpler.

These exercises, along with the backward circular flow of breath in the abdomen area, always move me into the deeper absorption, increasing my awareness of a mindful joy of how I feel physically, and contentment as in peace and ease. It is as if the body and mind are beginning to sit in empty space. I have the experience of slowly surrendering to that which is beyond self.

In the second dhyana stage, the intellectual activity described above begins to fade and is replaced by tranquility and one-pointedness of mind. Joyful interest and sense of well-being are still present, but the awareness and contemplation are emptied out, and one experiences just the mindful joy of samadhi. At this point, I am no longer conscious of the flow of breath or its direction. In fact, I am not conscious of breathing at all. The joy and contentment of just being seems to heighten. There are no thoughts running around in confusion. They come, are recognized for what they are, and are immediately dismissed. This is not the stage of “no-mind” because there are still objects present, however they are not much of a distraction. At the early part of this stage, as a practice, I often explore and experience the impermanence of my physical form, senses, concepts, motivational synthesis, and discriminating consciousness.

In the third dhyana, the mindful joy and contentment fades and is replaced by the rise of bliss and a movement towards equanimity. In this stage, everything inside the body is going through a great transformation including to energy structures and channels and every cell and nerve. After realizing the third dhyana, we look upon previous realms of joy as being the same as that of any ordinary person because we have now reached a heightened joy. Master Nan Huai-Chin says that it is only after one reaches this stage that you can get rid of diseases.
   

I find that I can get attached to this stage if I’m not careful. Some of the practices I do are probably not the best for moving into deeper absorption. Bliss is a very enticing force, and I am inclined to enter into practices that serve to enhance it for its own sake. I have trouble at times discerning when it is best to continue with a practice, or just let it go. For example, sitting in siddhasana is one of the practices I do from the beginning of meditation. The rising energy from this practice affects every nerve and cell and increases the level of bliss throughout the whole body. One may erroneously believe that they have arrived when this happens, however, such beliefs are only an obstacle to further meditative absorption. I must eventually let go of the bliss and allow it to fade. The temptation is to hang on to it, and enhance it.

In the first three dhyanas, there is an increased awareness of that which exists beyond self (ultimate reality, presence).  As all the remnants of "I-ness" fade, it is as if you become that presence. The seeker becomes the sought.  

    
In the fourth dhyana, all sensation ceases and only mindful equanimity remains. This is the realm where both suffering and pleasure are extinguished, where sorrows or worries no longer exist. This is the stage of the beginning of pure mindfulness. According to the sutras, unless this stage can be preserved (body and mind, inner and outer, fused into one whole) then the fourth dhyana is not completely realized.
    

In meditative absorption, I have touched the fruits of this stage, but it is far from a permanent way of being. At times, I've wondered if the complete realization of this stage would take one out of the realm of day-to-day living and responsibility, but the sutras suggest not. Those who have mastered this stage are able to move to other realms to fulfill daily tasks and responsibilities, but still not lose their state of pure mindfulness, and return to it at will.

Transphysical Energy Activation is Significantly Changing my Diet

I began to experience new sensations...or whatever you want to call them...on account of my diet.

About 10 days ago, while being intimate with my girlfriend, I experienced (as has been happening since August 2014) another energy implosion. After, which was quite unusual for me, I have not been able to eat solid food since. If I want to, I first I have to wait 10 hours to feel the least bit hungry.

Cristian with 3 Spoons Stuck to his Forehead

Before I understood what was going on, something else happened...repeatedly. I used to eat only 150-250 grams of solid food for my afternoon meal. After the implosion, I observed my stomach experiencing the sensation of "too much." At first, I couldn't explain it because nothing in the daily ratios of my diet had changed. This sensation persisted every time I ate solid food and repeated itself 10 times in 10 days. The food I ate was either boiled mashed potato with salad, boiled mashed chickpeas or beans with salad, or boiled cereals with salad. So, I asked myself: What on earth is wrong with this food?

Each day after eating one of these combinations, I felt distended, my stomach was swollen, and only after many hours did the sensation begin to fade away. That was the moment I realized I had to adjust my diet to include more liquids and fluids. Only yesterday, did I discover there was nothing wrong with the food. It was simply too much for my digestive system and my stomach refused to accept anything above what was actually needed. Before that happened, I weighed the amount of cereals I boiled, otherwise I'd have to throw away the extra amount. I do this every time I eat solid food.

So, for the moment, all I can eat is very fresh and uncut (and this is also weird … WHY uncut ?) foods. A few grams of fresh dill leaves, parsley, a little radish, a single cabbage leaf, two slices of onion, one little hot pepper, and a glass of water after. I no longer feel distended. Another weird thing is that when I eat, I eat each food separately, not mixed together. I eat them uncut, and I don't understand why I like them this way and not cut and mixed like before. Everybody except me cuts vegetables and salads into small pieces, adds vinegar, oil, salt. I do not.

The rest of the time, if I feel hungry, I can only drink liquids, for example, flavored black tea in the morning, then, in the afternoon, some kind of dehydrated vegetable soup in one liter of energized water, which becomes instantly hydrated and tastes good. I'm not losing weight at all. I am happy that I am also not gaining weight. My girlfriend is experiencing the same symptoms; we are connected beyond time and distance. That is an entirely new, long story.

Cristian with a Cellphone Stuck to his Forehead

And this phenomenon had been also correlated with the fact that my initial biomagnetism capability (consisting of one 5-8 gram spoon "sticking" to my forehead) has now amplified, enabling my 80 gram mobile phone to stick to my forehead. My hands also began to feel sticky.

Kundalini and Consciousness

Consciousness is a strange and powerful thing.

Consciousness is so weird, it's not quite right to speak about having consciousness, or even of being conscious.

My friends are intelligent and sympathetic people, but when I tell them that Kundalini is a biological eruption in every cell of the body, of a consciousness that lies beyond the body — they laugh themselves silly.

Materialism is the unquestioned faith of our day. When they've stopped laughing, my friends assure me that consciousness is just a chemical reaction in the brain. They point out that different mental and physical functions can be located in different parts of the cerebral cortex, and that when a particular part of the brain is damaged a corresponding bodily or mental function is lost.

This is the twenty-first century equivalent of pious Victorian churchgoers pointing to the forms and structures of nature and leaping to the conclusion that a Deity must have designed them.

Consciousness comes before all this. Consciousness takes precedence. You need the presence of consciousness before you can even begin to study the brain and map it with electrodes. Consciousness remains, in deep sleep and coma, even when the various neural functions are lost or damaged. The brain is a response to this presence of consciousness.

A damaging result of materialist religiosity is that in our day-to-day lives we assume that consciousness is a weak, negligible thing, a helpless passenger carried along by the drives and addictions of our bodies, when, in fact, the very reverse is true. When Kundalini is awake, the body is in the grip of consciousness. A fathomless intelligence takes charge of every ganglion and synapse.

One of the most powerful effects of Kundalini awakening is what it does to love, and to the act of love. Our partner is no longer a distant object towards whom we struggle with our senses and mind in the hope of finding a little closeness. Neither are they just a separate personality that might, if we are lucky, happen to dovetail with whatever separate personality we happen to be stuck with. When Kundalini is active, our loved-one's face and body, their mind and their personality, come spinning out of a vortex of consciousness that is as beyond them as it is beyond us. We feel the same vortex of consciousness absorb us, our senses and our minds, from the base of the spine upwards as union becomes real, and love more than a dove-tailed closeness.

The Tantras describe the susumna nadi, the central, spinal channel, as having two thin, tube-like nadis inside it — the brahma nadi and the citrini nadi — where the Kundalini energy gets closer and closer to sheer consciousness. The citrini nadi is "as fine as the thousandth part of a hair, and pierces all the lotuses, and is pure intelligence" as Kundalini, "She who is outside the universe, and goes upwards," awakes.

Tying Consciousness to Breath - Anapana

In the Ekottara-Agama Sutra, Buddha teaches his son, Rahula. The first question Rahula asks is: "How can I practice anapana in order to get rid of my sadness and worries and be free of all thoughts?"

Straighten out your body and make it correct. Straighten out your mind and make it correct. Straightening out one’s body has to do with putting it in a comfortable position for meditating. Straightening out one’s mind involves breathing. Controlling the bird of thought is a matter of breath. If you cannot get hold of thoughts, they will run in confusion. If you cannot concentrate your thoughts, it is because one’s breath is scattering. When the breath scatters in confusion, then the mind scatters in confusion as well.

The Buddha advises his son “tie your consciousness to your nose.” Imitate the white crane. When the crane stops and rests, its nose faces its anus, and the two breaths circulate together. The phrase “tie your consciousness to your nose” does not mean to observe the nose. It means to pay attention to your breath as you breathe in and out. Make your consciousness follow your breath. Be aware of everything in respect to your breath. How long is the inhalation? How long is the exhalation? Is it a cold exhalation or inhalation? Is it a warm exhalation or inhalation? Observe in full detail as your body breathes in and out, and be aware of it all. The results will be that the power of memory will be very good and your brain will be especially alert.
~ Master Nan Huai-Chin - Adapted from Working Towards Enlightenment

Belly Action in the Breathing Cycle

JJ Semple in his book Deciphering The Golden Flower One Secret At A Time, writes:

“Observing my breath as I sit one morning, I am aware that it has the property of direction. At each inhalation the hitherto imperceptible wind in my belly appears to eddy slightly at the bottom of my abdomen as it descends before taking an upward circular course. Or so it appears to me: Down the back, then up the front, in a circular motion. Something clicks. I remember the words ‘backward-flowing method’ in The Secret of the Golden Flower, words I’ve passed over a hundred times, never having a clue as to what they meant, never imagining they might be important. I break off to look for the passage. In two quick flips, I‘ve located the text: “At this time one works at the energy with the purpose of making it flow backward and rise, flow down to fall like the upward spinning of the sun-wheel…in this way one succeeds in bringing the true energy to its original place. This is the backward-flowing method.”

This is a good example of “tying ones consciousness to the breath.” In fact, by the mind alone, (by directing one's intention) consciousness can change the direction of the breath to facilitate the rise of Kundalini and the opening the energy channels as explained in JJ Semple's book.

My own beginning experience with kundalini is a little different but had the same result. During a period of intense meditation, I suddenly became aware of a spontaneous change in my breathing patterns. It started with deep inhaling and holding, and then a release of breath. It was as if the breath from the pressured inhale was being directed towards various areas of my body, particularly the diaphragm, to open up these places previously devoid of air flow.

A short time later, I began to notice further changes. I became conscious of my breath rotating in a circular fashion in the abdomen area. I felt compelled to encourage this circular flow of breathing as it gave rise to bliss and a sense of being moved deeper into meditative absorption. Along with this change in breathing pattern, in my mind’s eye I visualized a wheel rotating in the same direction with my breath. It was as if my consciousness and breath were working together to keep this wheel turning in a smooth consistent rotation.

This is another example of “tying consciousness to the breath." Both cases, cited above, resulted in the rise of Kundalini and the opening of the energy channels and chakras.

Dhyana is a Sanskrit word which means an absorption into a state of mind brought about by meditation. In particular, dhyana refers to the four stages of absorption, sometimes called the "four dhyanas."

Anapana, or “tying consciousness to the breath,” is the beginning of the first stage of dhyana. It is a cultivation practice that begins the process of eliminating worries, vexations, and confused thoughts as one develops an inward awareness of all that is happening in the body and a concentration centered on the breath.

In a future post, I will give a brief explanation of the four stages of dhyana as described by Master Nan Huai-Chin in his book Working Towards Enlightenment.

Arriving Back To Where We Started

Last night, I came across a famous passage from T.S. Eliot that explains the spiritual path and process very well. I had started to write "better than anything else," but I am training myself not to live a life of comparison, which has become a moment-to-moment challenge.

Eliot wrote:

"We we shall not cease from exploration,
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time."

These few potent lines sum up the spiritual journey. Eliot's seeking or "exploration" is a necessary and vital step. Opinion is divided on whether the "exploration" is necessary when we are already what we are seeking. But this view tends to come from those who have Awakened to their true place and hence have realized "they have arrived back where they started," which is why they say there's no need to "explore."

What I find hard to understand, though, is when this place is reached, why are all the years of "exploration" that went into getting to here suddenly dismissed. Something about it doesn’t feel right. Without the "exploration" or seeking how can we arrive "at the place." The "exploration" provides the fuel for the journey. Sitting back and simply saying, "Yes, I am THAT" is only likely to result in some kind of conceptual illusion with no accompanying transformation.

Understanding at a conceptual level leaves the identity or ego-I intact and in many cases this ego-I changes to a spiritual ego I which is very hard to penetrate. The spiritual ego-I is more clever than the purely materialistic ego-I. The mind of ego-I is always ready to be quicker than the soul or consciousness and without putting in years of necessary "exploration" falls prey easily.

I think I should now write from my experience and apply it to my own life because it has integrity and feels authentic. My "exploring" began in deep unhappiness when I was nine. It took the form of a plea to "God" to remove two protruding teeth that were the cause of my being bullied in school. Having both teeth knocked out when I fell on the street one day answered my plea; it began a lifetime of exploration that was underpinned by an absolute conviction that there was "something" other than me out there. Although my "explorations" have taken different forms over the years, that faith and trust in "something out there" has never wavered. I haven’t stuck rigidly to one path, but I have listened intently to my intuition and, as a result, I have "explored" a great many spiritual paths and traditions as well as personal self-development programs because I believe that both are necessary part of "the exploration." I have been criticized for this because the conventional wisdom states that the way to "arrive where we started" is to commit to one path and stay with it for life.
 
If you look at those who have followed this line of thinking, you won’t see too much evidence of Awakening among their ranks. Indeed, some of the most profound Awakening experiences in which people got to "know the place for the first time" have happened for people who weren’t on any kind of spiritual path, people like Eckhart Tolle.



That said, I did study and practice Mahayana Buddhism for almost 10 years which was the longest time I stayed with any practice. It was invaluable for understanding the mind and strengthening my nervous system so it could withstand the force of Kundalini when it rose spontaneously in 1998 and 1999.

What marks the "end of our exploring?" How do we know when we've come to the end? I assert that there is "no end." What ends are cycles of “exploration.”

The first stage of my "exploration" lasted almost 35 years and culminated in the experience of Awakening. Now begins another cycle, which I am clear will continue in future lifetimes. This is not something I have evidence for; it’s a deep intuitive knowledge given by the Grace of Kundalini. Any Awakening experience results in "knowing the place for the first time." Mooji always says, "It’s right here, right now, you are that." Without any doubt, Mooji "knows the place" and he tries valiantly and tirelessly to point it to others. However — and here I can only state my opinion — others have not done the necessary "exploration." Mooji advocates the exploration of self-inquiry, which has come down from Ramana Maharshi and Papaji. It is an effective technique for exploration, but it is an advanced technique that requires a firm foundation in understanding how the mind works. 

Many years ago, I did a similar exercise with a partner that consisted of looking into each others eyes. Each had 10 minutes to say "I AM." I began with gusto: "I am a woman," I am a daughter, etc… At some point in these ten minutes, I reached the bottom of the ‘I AM something’ and found myself simply as the I AM, a space of nothingness which is very hard to write about. Even now, as I write about it, I feel how profound it was. The experience didn’t result in that state of consciousness becoming permanent, but I was unconcerned about its going. I had touched something whose memory would never leave me.