"If you can Face it - God can Fix it
If you can Feel it - God can Heal it"
From
the ancient Indian tantric and later Chinese taoist traditions, there is a saying that
translates beautifully into English: "Where the attention
goes, the prana flows."
The highest gift we can give to another human being is our
undivided attention. The same is true for our own body. Simple,
high-quality awareness makes the body more alive and even heals
it. I will repeat this simple statement like a mantra throughout
the chapter.
The intellect, in its illusionary superiority, believes that
once a statement is made, there is no need for repetitions.
However, the deeper layers of human understanding are more like
a tense muscle; they need repeated massage for the blocks to go
away. Similarly, our undesirable habits require constant gentle
nudging to be transformed into something positive. As an
electric solo guitarist, I know that behind a well-played riff
lies a million repetitions.
Strength and Quality of Awareness
The inner energetic life of the body is highly influenced by
our attention. The more attention we direct towards the inner
body, the more the energies respond by moving and intensifying
in clarity. This feedback phenomenon means that strong, pure
awareness can create flow in the body. 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.
Pixels Beyond Name and Form
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.
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.
'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.
PIXELLATION
PROTOCOLS
Observing inner energies should
also be
an essential part of traditional meditation practices. There are
countless ways to do this, and over time, you will develop
techniques that are uniquely tailored to you. I will now outline
some pathways to help you get started on this glorious inner
journey. This will be done in a mix of actual meditation
guidance and explanatory text. Please have patience in this
regard. I believe that this form is the best way to lead you
into this strange and yet so familiar world.
What our Amazing Hands can Tell
us!
Let’s now initiate a concrete meditative pixellation
experience starting with our hands. Hands are cardinal when it
comes to the exploration of sensory energy. Unlike other areas
in the body, such as a stomach full of butterflies or a heavy
chest, hands generally serve as a 'safe space' for inner
exploration. It either feels neutral or pleasant to experience
the energy in our hands. As a general rule, none of the energy
phenomena in your hands can be described as painful. It is only
in rare cases that hands harbor unpleasant energies and in such
situations the hands most often feel too hot in the form of a
burning sensation.
Our hands are evolutionarily created as hot spots full of
sensory 'energy'. In this sense, hands are highly aware parts of
the body compared to areas like the shoulders and the back.
Hence, I recommend that beginners use the exploration of the
neutral but strong 'energy' in their hands as a starting point
for inner space travel. We could call this practice "homunculus
meditation," in accordance with the map displaying the areas
and proportion of the hands' neurological importance in
sensation.
Humunculus Meditation
After reading the next lines, close your eyes. Fold your hands
together in any way you like, as long as they are in contact
with each other. Observe from the inside what is happening in
the area of your hands holding hands. Let this process include
both the awareness of the skin's outer energy sensations and the
more abstract phenomenon of energy inside and between the hands.
Let your inner awareness rest here for a few minutes or longer
if you feel like, then come
back.
With your eyes open again, read the next part:
Did you notice that as soon as you bring awareness to your hands
with closed eyes, the energy in them begins to intensify? This
phenomenon is what is encapsulated in the previously mentioned
saying, "Where the attention goes, the prana flows."
Intertwined hands are one of the easiest places to discover and
explore an incredible ability we all possess: an energy-charging
mechanism triggered by pure, simple aha-awareness. Initially,
you might feel your hands becoming warmer, colder, heavier,
lighter, itchy, or tingling. However, when observed with
constant awareness, all these sensations seem to merge into each
other, forming what could be described as an abstract ball of
energy with its own morphing life. The deeper we get into a
meditative pixellation of our various sense-registrations, the
more they are able to merge into each other.
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.
Lying down is the best Position for Energy Exploration in the
Body
When
we sit upright in a traditional meditation position with
crossed legs, we deliberately block the flow in the lower part
of the body and create an upward stream of energy.
In a lying position, the energy flows more freely in the body as
a totality, but in a trade off where we become more
body-aware while
generating
less consciousness.
For the exploration of the inner body, it is hence recommendable
to lie on your back on a flat surface. Use a mat or a relatively hard madras. Do not use a pillow under your
head, as it will bend your neck and block the energy flow
between head and body. The inner flow of attention is closely
connected to the body’s position, so it's also important to lie symmetrically. Any asymmetrical body position will
block or distort the inner flow of energy. Even your hands, fingers, and
feet should adopt symmetrical positions. Prana loves symmetry!
Lie for a little while
as shown in the illustration.
Close your eyes for
a some time and initiate a preliminary body-scan. Localize the nameless dark energies from
your feet to the top of your head and then from the tailbone to
your throat.
Notice that
the character of sense-energy changes with every centimeter. The
dark energy in the ring muscle in the anus feels very different from the energy
in the stomach area or the area around your neck.
![](images/integralmed.jpg)
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.
Helping Hands
As this task is not an easy one, I recommend utilizing the
strong and safe energy of our marvelous hands.
Place your hands on your body in a location of your choice: it
could be the stomach area, solar plexus, or lungs. You can place
one hand on top of the other or intertwine your fingers. First,
allow the generation of the previously mentioned ball of energy
to take place in the area of your hands. Then, invite this ball
to enter the body at the place where you have placed your hands.
If the bodily sensations occasionally get too overwhelming, you
can always guide the awareness-energy back into your hands again.
After some time, come back and reflect on what you experienced.
Are You a Multi or Single-Tasker?
It is now time for a little personality test. Go back into
meditation with your hands placed on your body after reading
this next suggestion: After first becoming aware of the energy
in your hands and their interaction with your body, be open to
simultaneously feeling any other sensation from head to toe. It
could be the one created by
the skin's contact with the surface you lie on. You can also
experiment with awaring both hands and feet at the same time.
After returning to this text, I have a question for you: Were
you able to simultaneously be aware of both the abstract skin
sensation created by lying down and the energy ball in your
hands interacting with your body? Could you feel both your hands
and feet in one go?
In general, there are two
categories of interoceptive awareness types here. Some are able
to effortlessly multitask, while others prefer to focus on one
area of the body at a time. No type is superior here. It is just
a matter of knowing what type you are in this moment and
cooperating with that in your meditation.
Follow the Flow or Let the Flow Follow You
In the next session, allow this energy phenomenon the
freedom to move to whatever place in the body it 'wants' by its
own accord. Also, experiment with a more willed way of directing
the awareness where you want it to go. The inborn bio-system of
attention has the same ability as our breathing to be both
autonomous and willed.
Explore these two possibilities for as long as it takes. Take
several rounds of experiments before coming back to the text.
An amazing feature of the energy flow is that it follows our
attention. However, the reverse is also true: where the energy
flows, our attention goes. When our attention begins to follow
the energy, the process, like our breathing, becomes autonomous.
It takes on an intelligent life of its own. It is certainly
possible to deliberately choose the direction and place for our
body scan to move, but allowing the energy to guide our
attention can be much more interesting and effective from a
healing perspective. The amazing thing is that the body knows
much better how to heal itself than we do. So allow yourself to
be yourself and, in this process, be taken by yourself.
Let your Awareness take the Lead
On the next journey we embark upon, I invite you to set your
attention free to explore on its own. Once the energy ball in
your hands is invited inside your body, let it move its own
dance. Maybe the attention-field will go to your feet, maybe to
the top of your head. Slowly, you will get accustomed to
trusting the inherent intelligence in these autonomous awareness
movements, and you will be able to surrender more and more to
them without interfering in their work.
Let me give you a little example. Once, years ago, I was
scanning the energy body in meditation. Then I noted a tiny
sensation like a subtle pinprick in my forehead. I ignored it
because I was busy scanning my body in a willed slow movement
from toes to head. However, the pinprick sensation continued, so
out of curiosity, I gave up my scanning project and allowed my
attention to wander to the tiny sensation in my forehead.
Immediately after my awareness was set free to go to that place,
the sensation grew stronger and stronger, and suddenly a portal
to vast peace and bliss opened at that spot, leading me into a
wonderful state of being meditated by that wondrous phenomenon.
So, by all means, we do our deliberate body scans, but the real
fun happens when we let go of the control of where to focus.
The Spatialization-Exploration: Where is the Energy Located?
Now, aware of the body-stage on which this inner life-drama
is set, we can begin on a new exploration and that is to spatially pinpoint our emotions and interoceptive
sensations. This we can do, both by directing our attention to
different body-part with our will and with letting our attention
go its own ways.
This marvelous spatialization exploration is
described in detail in the chapter "Ouroboric Super-Awareness."
(It would be a good idea to read that text before you proceed.)
Now let us begin with the one percent of feeling sensations for
which we have coined actual words. The task is:
Where in my body do joy, pain, anger, love, envy, a fear reside?
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.
THE POINT OF DE-CRYSTALLIZATION
If constant attention, like water, flows into the inner
drought landscapes, the inner energy will sometimes reach a qualitatively
new state—a point of no return where a decisive shift in the
dance of energies occurs. This can be likened to ice starting to
melt and then again water starting
to boil when the heat is constant. For this process to happen,
the blocks in the Tibetan ice-body at least for a while must be
suspended or melted away.
Harmonization & Healing Point
While exploring the inner realms at rare occasions, when our
awareness is of high quality and quantity and in perfect balance
with the awared, a wondreous phenomenon can take place. I call
it the harmonization point. It usually comes
suddenly by itself and it should like a butterfly never be
hunted for.
At this sudden transition point of no return, the
nervous-electric energy begins to harmonize, organizing into
orderly energy patterns. The inner energy shifts from being
unpleasant to pleasant, even ecstatic.
This transition from chaos to new, unpredictable order can be
compared to an orchestra that, from playing without a score,
begins to play in unison guided by a common score and a common
beat. Here, attention itself is the conductor.
This will on a subjective level be experienced as a tremendous
healing almost like a little rebirth. Here we find ourselves in
forgetting ourselves and in this moment we are not defined by
our limitations.
Birth of the Inner Dark Space
The most important new quality in the experience of the
inner energies is their context—the space in which they unfold.
This space becomes much larger, expanding towards infinity. You
will experience a large, peaceful inner space within your body!
Focus is no longer solely on the energies themselves. They are
now inseparable from their context—the infinity of the newly
born inner warm space. Let us return to William Blake once more
with this new understanding:
"If the doors of
perception were cleansed,
everything would appear to man as it
is: infinite."
EPILOGUE: 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 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.
![](images/folesansmed.jpg)
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 - 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.
With warm regards,
Gunnar Mühlmann
gunnars@mail.com
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