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MEDITATIVE PIXELLATION
- a Way of Living
"If you can Face it - God can Fix it
If you can Feel it - God can Heal it"
There is a profoundly important
realization to be uncovered through the simple act of closing
our eyes. The most fundamental meditation technique is also the
simplest: closing your eyes while remaining fully awake.
What Happens When You Close Your Eyes
When we close our eyes, the body’s myriad sensations rise
into conscious awareness, revealing a rich field of
interoceptive perception. You can experience this for
yourself—just close your eyes for a few seconds.
In our typical waking state, consciousness registers only a tiny
fraction of the body’s subtle yet vibrantly dynamic, almost
roaring sensory experience. This disparity is striking.
It Is a Paradox
The moment we close our eyes, the inherently outward-focused
consciousness begins to align with the vast, ever-present, and
infinitely attentive ocean of interoceptive bodily existence.
This hidden life reveals itself under the light of consciousness
but unfolds on a stage of awareness we may not have known
existed.
Consciousness is generally unaware of awareness, and awareness
is oblivious to consciousness. We remain largely unconscious of
what we are constantly aware of—a reality that is truly
primordial. Awareness is ancient, while consciousness is the
"new kid on the block," initially unfamiliar with its
surroundings.
Gurdjieff’s Insight
Gurdjieff takes this even further, suggesting that a human
being consists of a hundred different personalities, most of
which are unaware of one another. These "personalities" are
essentially the sum total of various biological operative
systems accumulated and reused since our existence as amoebas.
Many, like digestion, function intelligently within their own
systemic circuits but remain oblivious to activities beyond the
"city walls" of their cellular polis.
Just as an ant walking along a highway cannot comprehend what a
car is, the primordial systems within us cannot grasp the
complexity of the more advanced systems that have evolved on top
of them. However, the most recently developed systems possess
the ability to understand and integrate the functions of those
that came before them. In this way, we can bring consciousness
into awareness of awareness itself—and in this process, even
allow awareness to become conscious of itself.
Mirabai's Wisdom
The Indian Saint Mirabai says:
"Oh Friend!
Understand
The body is like the ocean
Rich with hidden treasures."
With Mirabai, we are called to
consciously explore and understand these hidden treasures—the
archaic languages of the body. At the heart of all meditation
practices lies a state of conscious bodily awareness: alert,
present, and free from thoughts or external distractions.
THE CONSCIOUS CHOISE
How, then, do we practice this? It begins with the simple
yet profound act of closing our eyes while fully awake. This act
is not passive but a conscious choice—a deliberate decision to
turn inward. From there, the journey unfolds like walking
blindfolded along an inner path, guided not by understanding but
by 'innerstanding.'
Both the ancient Indian tantric and later Chinese Taoist
traditions encapsulate this beautifully with the principle:
"Where the attention goes, the prana flows."
We can consciously
choose where to be aware.
The greatest gift we can offer another human being is our
undivided conscious attention. Try it—it’s transformative. The
same principle applies to our own body. Simple, focused,
high-quality consciousness directed inside, enlivens the body and
even holds the power to
heal.
The first human being you must befriend, by bathing it in
conscious awareness, is your own body.
Strength and Quality of Conscious Awareness
The inner energetic life of the body is profoundly
influenced by our conscious attention. The more conscious awareness we
direct toward the inner body, the more this inner life responds,
becoming increasingly dynamic and vibrant. This feedback
phenomenon generates a reinforced flow within the body, and this
flow is directly proportional to the strength and quality of the
conscious awareness we invest in this inner loop.
This idea is worth repeating as a mantric self-reminder.
Gurdjieff referred to it as the practice of 'constant
self-remembrance'.
The intellect, in its illusionary superiority, assumes that once
a statement is made, repetition is unnecessary. Yet, the deeper
layers of human understanding resemble a tense muscle—they
require repeated massage for the blocks to dissolve. Similarly,
transforming undesirable habits into something positive demands
constant, gentle nudging. This is in fact the true meaning
behind the use of a mantra.
As an electric solo guitarist, I know that behind every
well-played riff lie countless repetitions.
The Cleansing of Consciousness
The next step, repeated a million times, is to consciously
engage with all bodily sensations in a state of innocent but
deliberate, conscious "aha-awareness."
What do I mean by 'aha'? By aha I mean childlike innocense.
Have you ever noticed how difficult it is to capture a natural
photo of someone who is self-conscious about being photographed?
Metaphorically speaking, we all adopt performative “silicone
lips” the moment we pose for the camera. Achieving innocence
within consciousness is equally challenging. Consciousness,
designed to analyze and manipulate the external world,
inherently lacks innocence. Similarly, awareness cannot
comprehend consciousness—it operates instinctively, acting
without intellectual understanding.
The holy grail of meditation lies in uniting these two operative
systems, bringing them together like knights at a round table.
This can only be done by cleansing consciousness from an
operative system that evolved so much in partnership with
the pure mirror of consiousness, that it almost works like a
symbiosis. Hence we inherently 'think' that the thinking process
is identical with consciousness. However, it is NOT.
Consciousness is, as explained in detail, like a mirror, not
affected by what is mirrored. This aspect has countless spin
offs. However the one take away here is that in order for
consciousness to merge into awareness, it must be cleansed from,
concepts, words and understanding. It must return to its
innocent aha-state.
INNER PIXELLATION - BEYOND UNDERSTANDING
Resting in inner, sensational body-awareness, and always
capturing feelings before they capture us, can ultimately lead
to a process I term "meditative pixellation."
Now, what do I mean by 'pixellation'?
Here is a short summary of what I mean by the term: As you
become more accustomed to observing the myriad of
sensations within your body, you will be able to penetrate the
wall of meaning through naming, behind which these sensations
hide.
“Out beyond
ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
there is a field. I’ll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase “each other”
doesn’t make any sense.
Rumi
Just
as images, whether good or bad, and other meanings and judgments
you assign to them, are fundamentally composed of pixels, so too
are your sensations. By sensing your inner body-self free from
concepts, so closely and intimately that all you are aware of is
the flow of pixels, you realize that these atomized sensations
and feelings are neither good nor bad. Behind the wall of naming
there is essentially no difference between pain and pleasure.
Through this,
the first layer of mind interpretations of inner bodily
sensations disolves.
The body's inner sensory space shifts from being
a stage for emotions and thoughts to becoming a field of
super-aware micro-dots of 'something.'
The 'Energy' State of Pixels
What you once called pain, before coming close enough, is
now just an endless morphing stream of what we could
metaphorically term 'energy'. Just as particles in quantum
physics fundamentally consist of frozen energy or light, the
building blocks in our inner world are revealed as made out of
liquid energy when we come closer to be aware of them.
Henceforward, I will refer to the pixellated state of sensations
as 'energy'. However, remember this term is only a beautiful
metaphor borrowed from a quantum world that I only know little
about.
Pixels are either bad, nor good
Imagine a digital image of Jesus or the devil. As you continue
to zoom in on this image, it eventually consists of neutral
pixels. Similarly, in meditation, hyper-focused pixelated
perception transcends our conventional notions of good and evil.
Seen and felt from this abstract primal reality, there are no
evaluated differences or boundaries. Here, we are all part of a
fluid continuum, a boundless life. In this sense the inner world
of the body is non-dual.
The experience of
tathata,
suchness, is fundamentally an experience of pixellated emotions
and sensations.
My challenge to anyone seriously willing and brave enough to
explore their inner world of senses and feelings through
introspection is as follows:
Any emotion or sensation, no matter how pleasant or unpleasant
it has been named to be, will ultimately dissolve into pure
neutral sensation for the one who continues to consciously
observe it in vigilant awareness.
Let's Refer to it as
'Energy'
At this profound level of interoceptive awareness, words may
still hold value, albeit words nearly devoid of conventional
meaning. Thus, I metaphorically name this 'something' as
'energy.' This energy can manifest in myriad forms and shapes.
Henceforth, I will employ the term 'energy' along with 'pixels'
and other expressions. Beyond the near-abstract emptiness of the
term, there is an intriguing observation: the deeper one delves
into this abstract realm of energies, the more energized one
feels afterward.
'Dark Energy'
To emphasize the fundamentally unknown and unnamed
sensations we encounter on the introspective path to inner
energetic oneness, I will metaphorically borrow a
term from quantum physics. Scientists try to explain what they
cannot really verify by using the term 'dark matter.' I will
henceforth sometimes use the term 'dark energy' as a reminder of
the integral 'unknownness' we must encounter on this path.
This very unknowingness also requires a fluid use of unusual
metaphors. You need to 'innerstand' the metaphors used in this
chapter intuitively. If I fixated and defined them as I would in
an academic text, you might think you understood the text just
because your intellect grasped it. This would be a grave
mistake, similar to theologians dissecting Meister Eckhart's
writings using intellectual 'headucated' analysis rather than
actual experienced wisdom through introspection.
Feel Your Inner Body with Innocent 'Aha' Awareness
I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own,
without moving to hide it or fade it or fix it.
Oriah Mountain Dreamer
In the pixellated state of dark
energy observation, focus on the phenomenon of feeling itself
without trying to change or remove these sensations with mental
strategies. Resist the temptation to tell stories. The key is to
mentally ignore the age old instinctual urge to 'do' something
about especially unpleasant
sensations while giving them your full, non-cognitive attention.
In this form of non-doing meditation, what matters is the direct
encounter between your innocent 'aha'-awareness and the interoceptive feelings
and sensations themselves.
Meditative Pixellation as a
Lifestyle
This inner non-judgemental observation-pixellation until we
reach the unifying state of dark energy is, in my opinion, the most important
form of meditation one can practice. Unlike other meditation
techniques that create ritual oases—specific time zones
dedicated solely to meditation—meditative pixellation is more of
a lifestyle than a technique confined to a specific timeframe.
It involves cultivating a permanent habit of body-directed
awareness.
Make it a lifestyle to always feel
yourself as an abstract flow of energy without reflecting on or
analyzing your experience. Let me massage this message into my
habitual unconscious body with a mantric repetition by telling
it to you: In this ever-ongoing meditation-riff, the goal is to
keep returning to an innocent 'aha' awareness of the feelings
and sensations in your inner body, from head to toe. The aim is
to live a life in what Gurdjieff termed 'constant
self-remembrance,' which implies the constant, effortless return
to a state of self-referential awareness.
Exteroceptive 'Distractions'
This act of continuous returning is necessary as we are
constantly distracted by our thoughts and outward-focused
senses. This exteroceptive 'distraction' is a natural process
created out of evolutionary necessity. However, now we must swim
upstream our ancient river of survival by turning around and
inward.
Every time we discover that
externalities have taken hold of us, we simply and without any
drama return to our roots of 'sensationing'. Do this while
walking, talking, eating, or scrolling; in any situation where
your brain gives you a sudden moment of self-awareness in which
you can remember the task of aware sensing. In such situations,
set your eyes free either by closing them or letting them stare.
You might even be able to continue an outward task, like
speaking to another person, while still being aware of the
energy-flow
inside of you.
On Deeper Levels of Awareness: We are all
Infinite Oneness!
"If the doors of
perception were cleansed,
everything would appear to man as it is: infinite."
William Blake
On deeper levels of
awareness they seem to exchange into a common currency, a united
abstraction leading into a world with less and less names and
forms. Hence the word energy as a 'lingua franca' becomes more and
more relevant as we allow simple but intense awareness to
penetrate our interoceptive realms.
In the next little session I invite you to observe and explore the
sensations coming from the surface of the skin in your hands.
Now fold your hands and close your eyes once more for a while.
After coming back: Did you notice
that the skin borders between your hands seem to disappear when
the energy, as a ball of oneness, makes the hands merge into
each other? Our external senses tend to divide everything, while
the internal senses, at least as experienced on a subjective
level, seem to unify everything. As perhaps the
most close and intimate sense, the
mechanism of skin
sensationing seems to be able to do both. As you sit with closed
eyes, observe how the exteroceptive skin sensations of sitting,
the places where you are in contact with the pillow or chair,
seem to blur into oneness. This oneness also includes the
interoceptive sensations of the inner body in the same area.
There seems to be an evolutionary link between outer skin
sensations in a given body area and an enhanced ability to feel
the deeper 'energies' emerging from the organic life beneath the
skin.
Now is that not amazing how much we can 'learn' or rather
unlearn from just simple observations of hands holding hands?
Close your eyes again for a few minutes and verify again for
yourself how awaring hands in hands plays out in your inner laboratory. Remember to base
your meditation practice on what you yourself are able to
verify, not on what I or others say to you. In meditation, we
get inspired from outside, but we only follow the voice(s) from
inside.
Let me, in this
context, make a claim for you to test: Just by the very act of
closing our eyes, we unify ourselves and, through that, the
world. This simple act is the beginning of the doors of
perception being cleansed, leading to life becoming infinite. By
holding your own hands, you make peace with yourself in the
morphing, growing ball of abstract energy. Now, can you imagine
what happens when you hold another person's hand? I leave it to
you to explore the expanded adventure of holding a friend’s or
even a stranger’s hands in a state of meditative pixellation.
THE INNER LANDSCAPES OF THE BODY
You are now about to embark on a journey into the secret life of
your own body. It is time to observe the essentially unknown
landscapes of your inner biological being. Each body part, each
organ and even cluster of organs has its own
energy signature, a signature that grows and morphs when given
the water of awareness. As we delve closer to more subtle levels
on the journey towards energetic oneness in pixellation, these
internal energy-body systems change their configurations.
Socrates' famous words, "know thyself," translate in this
context to "knowing" the energy formations within the body.
Becoming familiar with your inner body's moving and morphing
energy signatures is, for me, true wisdom as opposed to mere
cognitive knowledge.
The 'axis mundi' of dark energy runs from the anus to the top of
the head. Some of these areas are hotspots for energies that can
be difficult to contain in neutral awareness, as they can be
highly intense and even unpleasant. You might then ask why you
should engage with these energies. The reason is simple: the
more unpleasantness you can contain and digest in your field of
awareness, the stronger the emotional healing process in your
body will be. We feel to heal.
However, you will need the bravery of a warrior to successfully
'hunt' and heal the energies within the body’s kingdom. With
each minute, day, month, and year, you will become better at
this practice. It is truly an art where you are both the artist
and the masterpiece.
Biochemical Sensing
Instead of Known Feelings
Take any feeling, especially when it is fresh
and prominent: lie down as described and examine it. It could be
clusters of fear in the stomach or tensions in the throat. When
contemplating someone you love, warmth might emanate from the
chest or a pleasant lightness might fill the whole body. Feel
the lightness in the body when feeling happy.
Once you step into the anatomical landscape of so-called
familiar emotions, you might discover an unfathomably simple
truth: behind familiar concepts like anger, joy, jealousy, love, offense,
and feeling good lie abstract biochemical sensations placed in
various locations of the inner body.
All our seemingly familiar emotions are, in reality, spatially
expanded electrochemical sensory energy phenomena. These
phenomena have distinct qualities depending on where in the
inner body-space they are perceived.
Every Energy-Bundle Represent a distinct Bio-Operative System
Next more advanced step is to explore the energy in hands as they rest on your
stomach area. Feel and aware how they merge into oneness with
you stomach.
You might here feel something akin to the famous 'butterflies'
in your stomach, described as tickling, crawling, burning,
nervous, or electric energy. These sensations often resemble
pain. Let these sensations blend with the more neutral energy
ball in your hands.
As discussed in the chapter
Consiousnes & Evolution the human body is made of remodified
and recykled genetic information since the beginning of life.
A friend of mine told me that both the times he had taken LSD he
felt that there was a hostile meat-eating plant residing in his
stomac. As far as I see it, his stomac was not happy and it was
not able to tell him before somehow a psychedlic tuned brain
gave the stomac the ability to communicate in dream-like
symbols.
In fact all the various essentially nameless bundles of discinct
energy signatures are the wordless languages in which our
ancient biological parts communicate with us. 99 percent of them
do not understand normal language or cognition so we have to communicate with
them on their terms.
Again by personal
observation, notice that these sensory patterns are not static.
They may begin to move in slow, sweeping motions, evoking the
movements of seaweed in the sea. The transformation of these
patterns from static to dynamic is influenced by the quality and
intensity of the awarenes with which you
observe them. As mentioned in repetition like a mantra, they grow more dynamic and start to morph when
nourished by the warm sensory sunlight of heightened awareness.
It is the sheer presence of vigilence, in its most fundamental
and wordless state, that nudges these
patterns into a condition of flux. Figuratively speaking, I imagine our cells
transported back to life in the Cambrian primordial ocean, where the first
cellular symbioses reveled in the warming morning light of the sun.
It's utterly fascinating that we carry within us such a varied sensory aquarium
without actually being aware of it. It's astonishing how knowledgeable we are about the
world and yet how ignorant we are about ourselves.
Inner Jellyfish, Fire Coral, and
Sea Nettles
Continuing with the zoological
imagery, which is entirely my own poetic way of describing
something that is very hard for the conscious and cognitive mind
to understand. These metaphors are mine, and they help me
understand and connect with my inner sensations. You might find
different metaphors that resonate more with your experiences.
The journey of pixellation initially involves deconstructing all
known feelings into abstract energy. Once this goal is achieved,
the next step is to use new imagery that helps you visualize and
relate to these internal phenomena.
In my world it makes sense to describe these slowly dancing
three-dimensional energy patterns as for example inner jellyfish.
A sensory
pattern, with its sensory tendrils, takes on a form that closely
resembles internal jellyfish or fire coral, depending on the
level of perceived threat.
These jellyfish, along with countless other life forms within
us, live their own lives as they swim around in the body's dark
primordial ocean. Anyone who introspectively explores themselves
can go on a hunt for these Cambrian creatures lurking namelessly
in the body's inner darkness.
The
a-ha awaring of energy becomes the lingua franka we
use in communicting with all these ancient but remodified surving lifeforms
within us.
Here, seemingly nondescript terms like sensory patterns,
emotional patterns, or energy patterns can act as magical keys.
As long as we still operate under the ego operating system, we
can only truly "see" the troll after it has been named. Later,
as we become more awakened, we will be able to consciously aware this inner world wordlessly, in an
innocent form of
"aha" recognition that can't be described, only experienced.
EPILOGUE II: THE WATER-BODY
Oh Friend! Understand
The body is like the ocean
Rich with hidden treasures.
Mirabai
Peer inward now and uncover a wondrous realm.
Find your own way of doing this, but here is my poetic take on
what to percieve. It is not academian based science, but it might inspire you.
The Tibetans wisely and wonderfully use the metaphor of an
ice-body full of energetic blocks that, through the heat of
tummo, slowly melts
into a flowing
water-body.
The internal, abstractly
spatialized electrochemical sensory shapes consist of bundles in myriad forms
and variations. These bundles, unique to each individual and each moment, are intricately
constricted and/or expanded and continuously evolve in response to the sensed
external environment and our thought process. They could be described as fluctuating sensory patterns with
specific locations, shapes, and dimensions. Such a pattern might extend its
tendrils into the arms, legs, and head, but its true core generally resides
somewhere within the inner torso. The "Rome" of our inner body lies in the
torso, but countless other "sensory pattern-civilizations" traverse the pathways
from the sphincter muscle up to top of the head and out in arms and legs. These
abstract patterns often manifest as
independent, abstract entities with a central core and tentacle-like
projections. As we become more acquainted with these inner ancient operative
systems, we
discover that different zoological sensory patterns belong to different regions
of the body's internal ocean. Why do I here use the analogy of the ocean? It is
because I do believe that each of these energy signatures in our
body are recalibrated versions of ancient bio-operative systems
within our body. Many, if not most of these systems were like
the drivers to our heart-beat, that were made in sea-annemonaes,
already living a pre-cambrian oceanic life. Every cell in our
body lives an oceanic life. These metaphoric
statements align perfectly with the ancient Tibetan notion of
humans as being flowing water-bodies.
EPILOGUE II - The State of Simple & Sensed Amor Fati
This is the simple path towards freedom. Be aware of yourself - know thyself
- not as a distant onlooker, but as far as possible as a non-judgemental 'feeler.' Here it is not so much about
seeing the light, but in close subject-object union, feeling the warmth of the
light. Way too many meditators are too visual in their observation of
themselves, which is in danger of creating an alienating split in the pscyche,
where you become a gost-like distant onlooker to your own life.
There is anecdotal evidence of people attending an intensive meditation course
and then when they come home they have difficulties loving even their own
children.
In fact, we have two cosmic antennas: one is
consciousness, and the other is
awareness. Focusing solely on cultivating consciousness in meditation
creates a dangerous split within us. We must first anchor ourselves in
awareness. From there, the task is to merge the two into a unified system of
conscious awareness, which is defined on this site as
ouroboic super awareness.
Meditation is about constantly returning to the near-sensed micro life in
living, loving awareness. Nothing else is needed. In fact, all else is just
distractions and what Rumi would call "poor translations."
This is to live in a state of simple amor fati, a love for what appears in front
of our nose.
So, why does the world excel in poor translations? As mentioned, it is because
we in the West tend to follow the desire to commodify. Closely related to that
drive is the urge to 'understand' in order to manipulate. This cultural tendency
makes us overly mental, which in turn affects our approach to practicing
meditation.
THE
SPATIALIZATION OF THE INNER BODY
Now let's shift
our attention to the medium in which this flowing, pixelated
energy occurs. What does the stage look like? What is the nature
of the dimensionality of this inner world—so familiar that we
overlook it?
The Inner Cathedral
With eyes closed and
immersed in these inner energies, we find ourselves in what
could be described as a dark, inner void. I prefer to call it
our 'inner cathedral,' inspired by the sense of awe it instills.
As initially discussed in this chapter, the most marvelous
wonders often lie hidden behind the veil of the obvious.
The manifestation of inner
spatiality is so
straightforward that we often don't realize how wondrous this
process truly is. Even more amazing is the fact that we can
actually experience this spatialization multiple times and then
forget it the moment our "awareness camera" swings back to its
usual outward-facing mode.
It is exceptionally curious that we can host such a space within us and yet still
concern ourselves with mundane matters like mortgages.
Duality and Non-duality in a state of Super-position
As earlier sections have demonstrated, consciousness
requires some degree of separation to function. It can only
observe and experience within a framework delineated by the
distance between subject and object. Yet, within this dark
realm, everything is perceived as interconnected in a non-dual
unity. The inner cathedral is a location without location, a
space so fluid and alive that its boundaries seem to float. In
this way, the inner cathedral exists in both duality and
non-duality, much like a particle in a state of superposition.
Variable Spatial Dimensions of the Inner Cathedral
This celestial inner chamber only materializes when
consciousness turns inward. Our otherwise non-spatial internal
sensations take on spatial qualities when they intersect with
bodily sensations. However, the boundaries in this intensely
dark space are not visible; they are felt. The space is akin to
the night sky—everything, both the actors and the stage, is
fundamentally sensed rather than seen.
The galactization of the inner Cathedral
In a state of deep meditative attention, the sensations and
feelings you experience are all contained within an inner space.
This space is felt subjectively inside your body, and as your
focus spirals inward, the dark space that holds these feelings
becomes more conscious of itself. The feelings and sensations
grow more intense, but so too does the container that holds
them. Without this expansion, you'd be overwhelmed or even
traumatized by their sheer intensity. However, during an ideal
meditation or even a psychedelic journey, this space can grow in
size, intensity, and clarity, all in accordance with your level
of concentration.
THE PITFALLS OF NARRATIVES
In this context, meditation is the lifelong artistic project
of consciously perceiving basic sensations directly, before they
get 'contaminated' by our habitual verbalization.
Meditation is thus more than metaphorically a journey back to
the primordial forms of life.
Imagine a person or situation that has made you unhappy. When
you attentively and meditatively look inward, you'll discover
that what your mind interprets as 'unhappiness' is actually a
sensory phenomenon within your own body. You may feel a knot in
your solar plexus, accompanied by butterflies or a sensation
akin to jellyfish in your stomach. If you are not present at
this moment, you'll start engaging in a dialogue between your
burning jellyfish-self and your thinking self. These two will
create a feedback loop that, if you're not careful, becomes your
unending re-enforcing narrative. This narrative becomes your
reality—a reality where you live and jump around like a frog at the bottom of a well
rather than getting the over-view as a free bird in the sky.
How to break free
The first step to break free from this negative spiral is to
pivot 90 degrees inward and direct your attention straight into
the foundational emotion as it is in itself. This step is both
simple and exceedingly difficult, as thoughts continually
attempt to resolve the emotion that instinctively feels
unbearable. The trick is to neutrally disengage from these
thoughts and refocus your attention repeatedly on the basic
emotion. After repeating this 'exercise'—and I do not
exaggerate—thousands of times, it will eventually become
ingrained in the folds of your brain.
The next step is to contain our inner basic emotions. This is by
no means child's play, but new neurons are created through
repetition, and as the years go by, you will gradually get
better at finding comfort in internal discomfort.
Once you've progressed far enough in this internal reprogramming
to contain your foundational emotions without flinching, the
next step is to dissolve them into pure abstract sensations.
Before we return to the original sensory state of pure pixels,
however, we will encounter internal sensory patterns.
In this perspective, returning to the 'primordial ocean' within
oneself in conscious super-awareness means dissolving narratives into pure basic emotions,
and then further dissolving these emotions into their original
form of abstract sensations.
This pixelation process is one of
Meditation.dk's most esteemed life projects. For it's here,
between these three stages: abstract sensation, basic emotions,
and emotional narratives, that our lives unfold, whether we know
it or not. We come into being in the process where bundles of
sensed emotions become conscious and verbalized.
Are you ready to carve new grooves into the eternal phonograph
of your cerebral cortex?
Drama-Based Suffering vs. Pixelated Suffering
As stated now many times like a mantra:
Only hyper-awareness can balance our incredible journey in a
universe filled with unfathomable cosmological constants.
No spiritual path exists that is not as narrow as the blade of a
razor.
The part of the New Age scene that takes the body's life
seriously is rife with melodramatic suffering. Here, the drama
narrative about everything that has opposed us is performed in
tears and sobbing. Especially in new-spiritual Ayahuasca and
other pschedelic
circles, there is a profusion of drama-induced weeping where
participants rile each other up to unprecedented heights, guided
by some South American Indigenous shaman adorned with vibrant
feathers. The shaman, incidentally, has little to no
understanding of our complicated Western psychology.
The razors edge
The collective narrative here is that we go through immense
pain, only to emerge purified on the other side. There's
considerable truth in this catharsis. The issue, however, is
that it can easily become self-perpetuating, trapping us in an
endless story of suffering instead of liberating us.
Sentimentality involves 'emotionalizing' an emotion. Sentimental
suffering in meditation is a counterproductive loop where the
original, genuine suffering, instead of standing naked, gets
captured by a narrative that now in itself creates suffering.
The first and genuine sensing is the one that sees the
approaching tiger. The sentimental sensing is the one that
imagines the tiger coming; this imagined tiger then lands in the
emotional body, plaguing it with imaginary monsters.
For me—and this is purely a personal perspective—no composer
captures the essence of genuine, undramatic suffering as
effectively as the Russian composer and pianist Rachmaninoff.
Listening to him play, you'll find he doesn't sentimentalize the
music through exaggerated emotional expression; instead, he
delivers an almost mechanical performance that belies his own
fingers' interpretation.
To undergo a purifying form of suffering, the suffering itself
must first be stripped of words and narratives, leaving only the
pure bodily experience. In this logical framework, there's no
room for the traditional performative ego with its illusory
belief in existential choice. From the vantage point of
heightened consciousness, the notion of free will becomes
irrelevant; everything occurs according to infinite algorithms
reflected in a cosmic mirror.
In navigating our bewildering journey through a universe filled
with unfathomable cosmic constants, only an elevated form of
wordless, ouroboric conscious awareness will suffice.
This new situation demands a radical departure from traditional
spiritual wisdom.
I observe so many people who falter on their surfboard of life
because they in blind respect use outdated spiritual software.
With warm regards,
Gunnar Mühlmann
gunnars@mail.com
This transformative journey calls for a radically new form of
super-aware consciousness,
one that transcends the limitations of our previous,
problem-inducing state of thought-mind. However, meditation
isn't a direct solution crafted after a hard-fought battle with
our issues. Instead, it often emerges as an unpredictable and
unexpected intuitive response amidst life's chaos when we cease our
attempts at resolution, recognizing the futility of our
endeavors.
Embracing pixellative meditation means accepting, even loving
life's inherent chaos—a task that demands a gradual approach.
It's about learning to live with pixellated suffering and
navigating the delicate balance between exerting control by
kindly turning away from the incessant chatter of the mind and
embracing the loss of control that such detachment inevitably
brings.
This process leads to the rebirth of Nietzsche's dancing star,
symbolizing the emergence of new insights and order from the
acceptance of chaos. Meditation, in this context, is an act of
surrender to the fractal-mathematical intricacies of existence,
where a new intelligent order is born spontaneously but only after the inner
turmoil aligns with the "vertical line in the quadratic
equation" of our being.
Thus, to engage in pixellation in meditation is to undertake a
journey of accepting chaos step by step, finding a way to live
life surfed on the fine line between controlling our response to
the mind's narratives and the liberation that comes from letting
go of this control.
Pixellation in meditation can be seen as a Darwinian act of
survival. When traditional mental solutions fail to alleviate
the pain of a narrative-saturated life, evolving our
consciousness becomes essential. This evolution isn't just about
improvement; it's about survival—adapting our consciousness to
overcome challenges created by our old thought-mind survival
system.
Historically, we haven't been coded to look inward, as it hasn't
offered evolutionary advantages. Our energy has been focused on
survival tasks like procuring food. However, this internal
ignorance is now endangering our species. Richard Dawkins' view
of a soulless human archetype will doom us unless we gain
insight into our own conduct.
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