Energy Body Ways

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Meditation can be complex subject.  Many people are selling it instead of teaching it as a progression of awareness that is supposed to set you free.

The main problem is that the practice of it often ends up the goal, instead of the state of mind.

Did you meditate today?

Is that what really matters?

The thing is that meditation, like physical or hatha yoga, is something that is designed to get you into a state where you let go of a certain kind of thinking.

You let go of a certain kind of thinking and experience the world as it is.

When you are experiencing the world this way you recognize there is

• happiness and sadness
• love and hate
• pain and pleasure
• peaks and valleys
• and everything in between

You realize that you can focus your mind, control your attention, and by doing so get a different perception of reality and your consciousness.

Unfortunately, meditation and yoga and prayer and spiritual systems can become a crutch.  They are not supposed to be a crutch, they are supposed to be training wheels. When you reach a certain point you need to let go of the training wheels.

Like with training wheels how do you know you’re ready to ride on your own?  You have to start riding naked.  You have to start doing it without the training wheels.

If you’ve been meditating for years you’re ready to expand your meditation into your everyday life and try new approaches.

Don’t fall into the trap of thinking the practice is the doing.  It’s not. Don’t fall into the trap of thinking you’re not ready.  You are.

This week spend some time without the training wheels.

Try something that is a moving, waking meditation.  Examples require staying present in the moment while remaining flexible and open.

Here are some possibilities:  play hacky sack; play music with some friends free-style (not from a set song – in other words, jam); go somewhere for awhile and don’t know where you are going – make it up as you go along; meet with people with no expectations; just go with the flow.

If you don’t need to practice this… that’s great.  But most meditators or spiritual devotees need to spend less time on a rigid practice and more on expanding that practice out into their life.

Either way, enjoy yourself.  Watch it all coming and going.

That’s what should be your meditation: existence itself.

In my earlier posts I explored how to develop siddhis according to ancient yogic texts, and siddhis as evolution.

Siddhis are fascinating.  There is a perspective in Tibetan Buddhism that enlightenment is itself a form of siddhi.  This neatly flips on its head the assumption that enlightenment and siddhis are separate.

What counts as a siddhi has at times been extraordinarily broad.  For example, savant like counting abilities, as with Dustin Hoffman’s character in the movie Rain Man, have been regarded as a kind of siddhi. So has a gift with making money!

All the parapsychological phenomena – psychokinesis, telepathy, energy healing, clairvoyance or remote viewing, etc – would all be classed as siddhis.

Contemplation, concentration, and meditation are the means to acquiring siddhis in the ancient texts.  Many modern techniques are similar, involving prolonged visualization.

To explore siddhis control over and use of imagination is key.  Imagination can sound unreal, which is unfortunate, because controlled or creative visualizatioin is essentially the same as imagination.  The term ‘visualization’ can also be a problem because actually generating visual imagination is not important – you can use imagined feelings, sounds, tastes, or smells, too.

Use your imagination to begin building the foundation to developing siddhis.

• The Life Divine. Part 4. Supramental Race

• The value of the spiritual experience could perhaps be proved by the power it gives, the power to change these appearances and transform things, circumstances and the world as it appears to us, in accordance with the will that manifests through that experience. If, as Sri Aurobindo promises us, the supramental force, consciousness and light transform this world and create a new race, then, just as the apes and animals could not deny the existence of man, so too man would not be able to deny the existence of these new beings. — The Mother

In yoga ’siddhis’ is a term for the special abilities that people supposedly have or develop,  such as psychic abilities.  The term encompasses everything from seeing into the future and the past, reading the thoughts of others, levitation, shrinking and expanding one’s body, and even healing and flying.  There are even more siddhis and the simple secret to exploring them is here.

Most traditional forms of yoga vehemently discourage the pursuit of siddhis, claiming they are an impediment to SELF-realization, a form of enlightenment.  This conventional view is that siddhis distract from enlightenment and are best left alone, perhaps briefly noted yet best left alone.

Other traditions, such as shamanism, deliberately work at cultivating siddhis to help the tribe or even just to gather personal power.  Even in yoga there are writers and teachers such as Sri Aurobindo who prophesizes the coming of what he calls the Supramental Race, a select group of people who become to humanity what humanity is to the apes.

This rise of the Supramental Race can be done through select practices of yoga.  In the Yoga Sutras it is explained how to acquire siddhis.  It is done through assorted forms of discipline in how one lives, and most especially it is done through the control of one’s thought.  Beginning with contemplation and progressing into meditation, samadhi, and beyond, one eventually develops direct control of mind and the result is the awakening of supernormal powers and consciousness.

In this futuristic mythology those who have developed this extreme consciousness could then become the Supramental Race, if they so choose.  Sri Aurobindo, at least, was very clear this new race would not be the masses of humanity.  Instead it would be a small and select group composed of dedicated and adept individuals pursuing their highest potentials.

Siddhis are part of their potentials.  In this next evolutionary step nothing is left behind; all is embraced that is achievable and worthwhile.

It’s an inspirational story.  A little late in arriving in the real world, but inspirational.

I think psychic powers are cool. However the reliability of people who claim to be psychic can be very low.  In all fairness some psychics do better counseling than professional counselors, but what is the best solution of all?

Pursuing siddhis and intuitive development on your own through channeling your imagination, developing parts of your mind that are little used and very useful, will help the most.