Follow Your Own Bloodstream - path of stillness #3

Okay, feel my hand - check.  Pull my senses into Open Focus - check.  Next up - follow my own bloodstream, which is apparently an Apache technique for putting the mind in a state of Sacred Silence.

To begin, I take a few breaths.  That's easy.

Okay, the next part loses.  "Exhale completely, pausing before inhaling."  Is that before or after I take the few breaths?

My guess is that I take a few breaths first, then go onto the heavy lifting.

So, now I exhale completely - pause - then inhale (I am assuming, although it's not spelled out, completely, too.)

No - back up!!  It said to pause before inhaling, but didn't really say to inhale.

Instead, in the space that is that all-important pause before inhaling, I focus my attention on my heart until I feel it beating.  Frankly, I think it's going to take longer than a mere pause to do that (am sure I'll get faster with experience).  

Take another breath & then exhale.  Along with my heartbeat, I need to find the sensation of my pulse moving through my hand, my scalp, my entire body.  (That's definitely taking longer than any itty bitty pause.)

Staying focused on the feeling of my entire (!) circulatory system as it channels my lifeblood through my torso, including my individual organs, my arms, my legs, my head, my brain, eyes et al.  

THEN, while doing this last step, perform some simple task as I continue to feel my heartbeat & experience the my circulatory system pulsing through my body.

The promise is that I'll feel strangely blissful.  Makes sense, since my body will be totally whacked out (in a good way).  Definitely cool.

Open Focus - path of stillness #2

If feeling the inside of my hands startled me, the next exercise – Open Focus – practically blew my mind.

Sitting, I focused my attention sharply on an object in front of me.  That was easy.

Next, without moving my eyes, I broadened my attention until it registered everything in my field of vision, including the original object.  To the left, to right, up, down, right in front of me – all at the same time.  Had the weird feeling that if I tried, I could become aware of eyes at the back of my head & gain a 360 degree view.

Still not moving my eyes, I made the object of my focus the foreground, making everything else the background. 

Next – not moving the eyes – the object became the background & everything else became the foreground.

Felt like I was on an acid trip!

Finally, I focused on everything in my usual field of vision, all at once, while repeating out loud, “Floor to ceiling, all things equal.”

Zowie! 

There was an optional last step, which I haven’t tackled yet – while doing the final step, repeat the question, “Can I imagine the space inside the distance between my eyes?”  This optional step is said to have a terrific impact in shifting brainwaves into a deeply relaxed Wordlessness.  

Unexpected benefits - about a week after first doing this exercise, I was in Philadelphia, at an extraordinary concert on the Wanamaker Organ, Fred Haas playing the Bryn Athyn Cathedral Christmas song list.  Originally irked by the people & noises around me, turned to what I'd learned, I focused on the playing & let everything else drop into the background.

Finding the Inside of My Hand - path of stillness #1

According to Martha Beck, it's easier to drop into Wordlessness when we follow the Paths of Stillness.  The first startled me!

Shook my head in bemusement when I read the directions ~ hold my hand up in front of me, eyes closed, checking to see if I can sense the hand without looking at it. 

Seriously??  

Seemed sort of dorky to me. Didn't hold out much hope it would help, but I gave myself over to it.

The first sensation surprised me – warmth.  I could feel the inner warmth of my hand, which I don’t recall ever experiencing before.  It seemed like I could sense the very blood flowing, the bones, the muscles, my skin & fingernails.

Next, I held up both hands, eyes still shut, turning my attention from the one to the other, back again, then experience BOTH at the same time.  Strange - focusing inside my body was experienced so strongly as out-of-body.

Will that wordless experience help me drop into Wordlessness??

Unbounded

Seems reasonable to me that true appreciation of any given situation begins with viewing whatever it is without the boundaries, the limitations of words, instead looking to experience the boundless concept as it actually is rather than the vowels & consonants that represent it in a limited world. 

Which gets me thinking about how stunted the life of a typical public school student is in our current day.  The focus of publicly-funded education is to cram as many words & numbers  >data< into lesson plans, with no breathing room for discussion or consideration.  Recess is practically unknown in most schools; phys ed now largely limited to certain marquis sports; arts & music & theater – fluff – are the first things to be cut, when they should be the last.  

Students are left with words & left without the open space                                                                                needed for them to make any sense.

Which leads me to my own school.  Seems strange the Bryn Athyn schools don’t instruct students in meditation from the earliest years.  Feels like something that would be natural, even generations ago.   

Now that I think about it, have been stumped by how my birth faith stresses reading & seems dismissive (at best) or condemning (at worst) toward wordless intuition.  

IMHO, the General Church seems shackled by the very words                                                                        which should be liberating. 

There are a limited number of letters in my native language, a finite number of words in existence, far less ones I know, way fewer the ones I use.  But when I see a beautiful sunset lighting the cathedral a deep rosy gold, everything registers in my mind & on my heart without grasping for the right phrasing.  It just is.  Expressed but wordless.

Hamstrung by Language

When humans began using language - which seems to be used more to dissemble & distract than to make whole & connect - our rapport with magic, with the miraculous that once pulsed throughout all that was around us, weakened until it was considered a myth, something found in fairy tales, not k every day life.

It is sad but true that language, which hides true meaning & genuine emotion, pushes aside Wordlessness, just as it weakens the technologies of magic that once made the miraculous of the everyday.  

Language weakens & pushes aside the magic, but it can't destroy it.  Which is why we can reintroduce the lost tool of Wordlessness to our lives, why we can reinstate its place of importance in all we do, in all that is around us.

originally posted on another blog 01/26/13

Wordlessness * Oneness * Imagination * Forming

These are the four skills that help open us up to magic in our lives.  Instead of occasionally experiencing, occasionally seeing it our lives, these four techniques help us focus in on the miraculous that is not so rare as most of us tend to think. 

Each of them makes such total sense as to leaving me with a totally, "Ah, yes - that makes sense" response. 

Of course WORDLESSNESS is our truest self - we might not ponder it, but words are total artifice, created out of need to communicate with others. But put together two people who don't share the same language and the limitations of language becomes immediately apparent.  Words reflect our being's crassest self;  WORDLESSNESS embodies our highest, most fully genuine.

Of course ONENESS is our truest self - everything is one, barriers are themselves mere figments of imagination gone amuck.  Barriers between people & peoples, barriers within ourselves - they are no more real than the lines on a map that delineate countries.  Let go of the illusion of separateness, embrace & experience & be immersed in ONENESS.

Of course IMAGINATION is our truest self - everything that is but hasn't been manifested in the here & now is imagination.  Wow....  It's not cutesy or airy fairy, but downright amazing - when our true eyes are open, so MUCH we never considered because of thinking in space/time concepts keeps taking our breath way while constantly breathing new inspiration to help us see the unlimited What Is around us.  Instead of balking at questions, IMAGINATION opens the way to seeing the host of answers swirling around us.

Of course FORMING is our truest self, and the last aspect of the four - we start out with the illusion that we're formed, then liberate ourselves from language, our most obvious limiting illusion, language, see that everything is one, are awakened to the jaw-dropping endless vastness of imagination,  use all those new ah ha-nesses to come to genuine FORMING, which has no relation to the form we had starting out.

Totally cool....

originally posted on another blog 01/25/13

CHANGING IDENTITIES AHEAD ~ spiritual road sign

This blog seems just right for a bit of reinvention.  "Ask ~ Believe ~ Prepare ~ Receive" captures my current best next steps, ones I've been strangely yet typically been avoiding, sidestepping if you will.  Strikes as the just-right place to put together a working journal for my responses to, inspirations from & exercises in Martha Beck's Finding Your Way in a Wild New World.

Tried journaling, tried oversized Post-it Notes ~ both fell flat.  Too stolid, passive.  Hit me in the wee small hours of this morning - blogging feels just right. 

Ask ~ Believe ~ Prepare ~ Receive.  AKA - get the lead out & shake a leg!!

first posted on another blog 01/24/13