What is Meditation

Meditation Techniques

Spiritual Inspirators

 

 

 
CONSCIOUSNESS & AWARENESS

I. Consiousnes & Evolution

II. Defining Awareness & Consciousness

III. The Mystery of Awareness

IV. The Enigma of Consciousness
V. Consciousness in the East and the West
VI. What Can be Said About Consciousness
VII. The Ouroboros Consciousness
VIII.  Ouroboric Super-Awareness

IX. The Super-Awake Flow
X. Fields of Consciousness

XI. Group Meditation

 
THE INNER AND THE OUTER PERSON
The inner and the outer Person
The Sacred Wound of the Inner Warrior
 

THE BUTTERFLY OF THE SOUL

The operative system of thought
The liberation from or of the Self
The liberation of the greater Self
The Butterfly of the Soul

CIVILIZATION & CONSCIOUSNESS
Civilization and Consciousness 
Civilization and Consciousness Part II

 


 

 


 





 


SUPER-AWARENESS
The embodiment of Ouroboric Consciousness

Oh Friend! Understand
The body is like the ocean
Rich with hidden treasures.
Open its innermost chamber
and light its lamp
Mirabai

Go into your own ground
and learn to know yourself there.
Meister Eckhart

What is hidden in the simple

It requires a very unusual mind to undertake the analysis of the obvious.
Alfred North Whitehead.

No matter how tangled and complex my attempts to write Meditation.dk may appear at times, many of them actually stem from trivial banalities that most of us already know all too well.

Things that are too banal, self-evident, or obvious tend to disappear, much like the ticking of an alarm clock. It is these disappearing and small things that I am most interested in.

The Power of Awareness: A Lesson from New Delhi
Years ago, I found myself crossing a bustling street in New Delhi under sweltering heat. Feeling dizzy, I misjudged the height of the curb on the Indian sidewalk—vastly different from what I was accustomed to in Denmark. My toe, shielded only by a sandal, collided with the deviously protruding curb, initially causing a little injury. Despite immediate first aid, the wound soon became infected and led to a serious foot condition that required hospitalization. The lesson from this experience is straightforward: Had I been more alert and present, I could have avoided the mishap altogether. Things can go awfully wrong out of nowhere and out of tiny incidents when you are not aware. We are protected by our awareness. It is replete with instinctive survival strategies honed over our evolutionary journey from mammals to humans. In a state of heightened awareness, I could have navigated that challenging street effortlessly, much like a sleepwalker can perfectly balance themselves, even on rooftops.


Bodhidharma - Note the third eye,
a symbolic representation
of super-consciousness.

Bodhidharma and Ouroboros-Consciousness
Bodhidharma, the sixth-century Indian monk famed for bringing Buddhism to China, once meditated for nine years facing a cave wall. Legend has it he tore off his eyelids to maintain his focus and wakefulness, epitomizing what I term as Ouroboros-Consciousness—a heightened state of consciousness that turns inward upon itself in an accellerating feed back loop. Figures like Bodhidharma and other revered saints in Eastern mystical traditions often reach such elevated states of consciousness that they lose touch with their bodily sensations and their immediate environment.
Despite his super-conscious state, Bodhidharma would have been entirely unaware of his physical body or external surroundings, making him poorly equipped to cross that busy New Delhi street. In this case, the unaware fool and the super-conscious saint look similar.

The Embodiment of Ouroboros Consciousness: From Heights to Depths

The higher I fall, the deeper I fly

This chapter aims to delve into the intriguing descent of Bodhidharmic super-consciousness into the bodily realm. What transformations occur within our internal world when this spiraling vortex of ouroboros-consciousness penetrates our very being, from the crown of our head to the tips of our toes?

This could potentially induce megalomania if it were not for the fact that every human, in principle, has the capability to "galacticize" themselves.
 
The Genesis of Ouroboros Consciousness
To encapsulate the odyssey of consciousness, we begin with the premise that awareness has evolved in tandem with biological life itself. Initially, awareness was but a primitive form of consciousness that emerged in correlation with the growing complexity of living organisms. This nascent, body-centric awareness eventually gave rise to higher echelons of consciousness, capable of accessing abstract and immaterial realms—thoughts, imagination, and even soulful experiences beyond the body.

This advanced consciousness developed the capacity to break away from its bodily origins. It began to generate its own dreams and soar like Icarus toward the sun. Empowered by imagination and language, we took on god-like abilities to craft our own worlds. Some of these imaginative constructs even occasionally led to the invention of new tools and social frameworks, enhancing our survival in the external environment.

Ancient yogis and European medieval mystics elevated this feature of consciousness even further, to a level where consciousness ceased focusing on its own content. Instead, it turned inward, discovering and immersing itself in its own essence. In this abyss, it seemed to lose itself.
 
As elaborated in the previous chapter, these elevated states of yogic consciousness cut ties with bodily sensations, entering into a ceaseless reflective loop with itself. Envision this as a cosmic mirror: an internal universe endlessly reflecting its core essence. This labyrinth of self-reflecting mirrors embodies what we label as Ouroboros Consciousness—a state of intense, self-contained 'suchness' or 'isness.'

Focused intently on nurturing this body-transcending super-consciousness, Indian philosophical and yogic traditions held that this non-dual, hyper-conscious state would find its fullest expression in the crown chakra, Sahasrara. The lowest chakra it could interact with was the heart chakra, Anahata, in a form resembling universal love. When Ramakrishna in old age got cancer, advisors knowledgeable in the scriptures, urged him to allow his divine concentration go to his body in order to heal it. Ramakrishna replied:
"How can I withdraw the mind from the Lotus Feet of God and turn it to this worthless cage of flesh and blood?"

 
Freed from the trappings of the illusory material world and the body as another layer of that illusion, yogis were able to induce deeply concentrated states of Ouroboros Consciousness. It's within this cultural backdrop that the revered saint Ramana Maharshi's proclamation, The body is a disease in a disease, gains its full meaning. We find similar ways of thinking in ancient Greece:

A man is a dream of a shadow
Σκις ναρ νθρωπος
Pindar, Pythian 8.95f.

At this evolutionary stage, consciousness became susceptible to the 'noise' generated by bodily sensations—egoism, existential pain, desires, and unruly emotions—which had the potential to fragment the still-delicate phenomenon of Ouroboros Consciousness.
 
The return of the King of Consciousness
The key message of Meditation.dk is to illustrate that a transformative shift has occurred. The moment has arrived for an enhanced, luminous consciousness to reintegrate as fully as possible with the human body. In metaphorical terms, the Ouroboric King must reclaim his throne in the human heart, ruling the body from there, from head to toe. This throne wasn't empty; it was held either by the cold kings of reason or the various facets of the seven deadly sins. Yet, the benevolent Ouroboric King won't overthrow these occupants; instead, he will purify them with the warmth of his light and reposition them as his wise counselors.

As Ouroboros Consciousness returns to the corporeal realm, it gradually transforms the introspectively sensed body into a beacon of super-aware consciousness. When does this colonization occur? Only when Ouroboric Consciousness is robust enough to withstand an encounter with the untamed and tempestuous body. If this consciousness isn't fully formed, it risks shattering upon meeting the overwhelming sensations of the body's inner realms. This is why consciousness initially had to distance itself from the body—to avoid being engulfed. A feeble field of consciousness can't penetrate the layers of inherited pain within us, leading to incessant cycles of trauma and re-traumatization.

The Trial in the Book of Job and Jung's Notion of Individuation



As C.G. Jung elaborates in his book, "Answer to Job," after God's grueling test, the figure of Job stands out as more sympathetic between the two parties involved. Job, the fragile human being, not only endures but in a sense 'wins' over God by weathering all of God's harsh and inhumane trials.

In this context, Jung's notion of individuation becomes particularly salient. Individuation is the process by which an individual becomes who they truly are, integrating various aspects of the self into a harmonious and whole being. Job's trials can be seen as an intense process of individuation. Through enduring unimaginable suffering and ethical dilemma, Job refines his character and reaches a new level of self-awareness and wholeness. In a way, he accomplishes what even God's infinite and omnipresent light could not, thus adding a unique quality to the divine.

Jung concludes that God, 'impressed' and perhaps 'enlightened' by Job's resilience and the depth of his individuation, then 'decides' to incarnate as a 'Human.' This pivotal episode offers a symbolic foreshadowing of the coming of the Son of Man, embodying the divine aspiration for individuation and wholeness within the human experience.

The concept of Ouroboros Consciousness—characterized by an internal universe continually reflecting its essence in a self-replicating loop—finds a profound complement in Jung's notion of individuation. While Ouroboros Consciousness in its early devellopmental stage, seeks a transcendent state free from bodily constraints, Jung's idea of individuation urges us to harmonize the various dimensions of human experience, including our corporeal existence.

In a new phase of spiritual exploration, Ouroboros Consciousness is encouraged to re-engage with our bodily interior, echoing Jung's principle that the journey towards individuation requires a deep embodiment. This integration of Ouroboros Consciousness with bodily awareness represents a kind of divine individuation, uniting the ethereal and the material in a holistic expression of human potential. Here, the celestial mirrors the corporeal, and the spirit finds its completion not in escape from, but in deeper engagement with, the physical world.

Put on the edge, it is not longer my job to be god.
It is gods job to be me.

God is foolishly in love with me,
it seems he has forgotten heaven and earth
and his happiness and deity,
his entire business seems with me alone.
Eckhart

THE SUPER-AWARE BODY


However, before engaging the pysical world we must first of all enter the realm of our own inner body. Essentially, this signifies a return of consciousness to its primordial roots deeply anchored within our ancient biological architecture.
Our brain comprises various layers, akin to the rings of a tree. The deeper we delve into this neurological 'tree,' the older and more dormant the systems we uncover.
 
Currently, Ouroboros Consciousness—by virtue of its recursive nature, constantly feeding back into itself—is poised to embark on a conscious journey back to its origins. It does so by vigilantly 'awaring' the inner, interoceptive realm of bodily sensations. In ever-deepening spirals of self-referential loops, it reverse engineers our entire evolutionary trajectory, traveling layer by layer through the body, back to our most ancient, pre-Cambrian cellular states, and even further, into the elemental stardust that we are made of.

Awareness feels the warmth of the light. Consciousness sees in light. In the exiting journey back home the body becomes a temple lit with the warm light of consious awareness. We will now look at, in detail, how that process takes place. The first thing to point out here is that super-awareness observed from an academic lens, is almost retarded.

Super-awareness does not understand anything

Would I have a God whom I could understand,
I would no longer hold him for God.

Meister Eckhart

There is nothing to understand
Papaji

As introverted super-awareness manifests within the body, one becomes cognizant of an array of internal sensations, many of which defy linguistic and cognitive encapsulation. In the words of Papaji, There is nothing to understand in this state of super-awareness. Instead, using Emanuel Sørensen's terminology, one comes to 'innerstand' sensory signals in a state of pure suchness or isness.
 
In this heightened state, there are no qualifiers—no but, if, when, what, or why. Super-awareness perceives the inner sensory cathedral of the body without analysis, transcending ordinary comprehension. Instead of understanding, one might say there is knowing.
We must remember that ouroboric consciousness is so endlessly and singular intensely turned upon itself that there is no room for cognitive processes as we know them. The singular feedback forms a bridge where consciousness crosses over from duality to non-duality. Therefore ouroboric consciousness is becoming more and more ignorant as it aproaches the feedback singularity.

When the Ourorobos descends into the body to become conscious super-awareness, it fundamentally retains its self-referential feedback mechanism and the same quality of non-understanding. The evolutionary trade-off is that this feedback loop compresses all dualistic distinctions to a point where traditional cognition becomes impossible.

Here there is only a space left for a tsunamic roar of a-ha!

"When attention turns towards itself,
there is a sense of not-knowing.
When it turns outwards, that which can be known is created."

— Nisargadatta Maharaj

This dynamic also sheds light on why many, though not all, super-conscious beings often appear almost childishly naive when articulating their own states.
Yongey Mingur Rinpoche is arguably one of the most super-conscious individuals alive today. Nonetheless, his otherwise endearing explanations of his own state are far from complex, as evidenced in this Youtube-clip. In the hindu and buddhist traditions there are countless stories of fools bypassing intelligent people in the race for enlightenment.
 
The non-cognitive Intelligence embedded in Super-Awareness

Yet, there appears to be a wholly new form of knowing present within this vortex of super-aware suchness. Yongey Mingyur serves as a beacon for the unfolding of this new intelligence. The term 'intuition' falls short in capturing the essence of this emergent form of knowing. Words struggle to depict this wordless dimension. We encounter the recurring quandary that a lower-dimensional system of intelligence struggles to encapsulate its more advanced, higher-dimensional successor.
 
The best way for words to point in the right direction is through poetry.

The Grand Translator
Intriguingly, the seat of this unique form of intelligence seems to reside in the heart. At least it is experienced so. As ouroboros consciousness circles back, it materializes as an intense feeling of love, righteousness, and compassionate goodness within the heart, imbuing it with profound wisdom. The heart is in this sense The Great Translator. It translates the impersonal, endless and basically cold algoritms governing the universe into deep human feelings. From a cosmic perspective, one could argue that God is fundamentally indifferent to our existence—we are less significant than a speck of dust beneath an insect's feet. However, it is through the human heart—the "Son of Man"—that God gains the capacity to love. Therefore, without the activation of this translating mechanism, enlightenment could devolve into a jarring and incomplete experience of extreme depersonalization.

While this intelligence is subjectively felt as a deep emotional resonance in the heart, it can also be metaphorically viewed as a biological transformation—a comprehensive rewiring of the brain and body.
 
Science and imagination
Science is undeniably a magnificent instrument for understanding our world, but it has its limitations—limitations often set by the scientists themselves. Occasionally, scientists neglect to include themselves as fallible, unknown variables at the end of their equations. When they fail to show this humility, they inadvertently become the self-assured priests they once opposed for centuries.

Einstein held imagination in high regard, and in that spirit, I venture to posit: Ouroboros consciousness harbors within it the universe's most potent anti-entropic quality. Yet, this quality comes to fruition only when Ouroboros Consciousness descends and incarnates in the body as super-awareness. It's why 'luck' seems to follow those who are super-aware—time and space appear to bend as servants in their presence.

You may now wonder: How can intelligence exist in a non-cognitive, non-verbal form? Consider the example of slime mold. Intelligence can manifest in numerous ways, yet we often overlook these alternative expressions. Much like frogs in a well, we are limited by our own frame of reference and find it difficult to conceive of the birds soaring in the sky.
 
The Super-Aware Bypass

As discussed in the chapter, The Super-Awake Flow, this emergent intuitive intelligence progressively assumes tasks and actions that were once governed by a more laborious, thought-centered operating system. One of the many qualities of super-awareness as an operating system is its ability to bypass the thought operating system and therefore language. I will try to narrow down and thus make more tangible the understanding of consciousness to the following: Ordinary 'weak' human consciousness can be simplistically viewed as an intelligent data processing operating system. This operating system is at present centered in an cognition and language based 'ego'. This ego operates in duality, both inwardly in the form of 'I' and 'me', and outwarly between 'me' and 'you'.

All creatures contain one reflection:
one, that is the denial of its being the other;
the highest of the angels denies he is the lowest. 
God is the denial of denials.

Meister Eckhart

Fundamentally, humans are not reliant on the ego's language-based and understanding-centric interfaces to perform intelligent actions. The immediacy and intuition of super-awareness, bypassing the need for words, interact with time and space in ways that seem almost magical when compared to the ego's conventional thought processes. Intelligent action is born of the super-awakened intuition.

At Meditation.dk, the ultimate treasure—what some might call the Holy Grail—is discovered when meditatively nurtured super-awareness transcends the confines of the ego's linguistic bubble, plunging deeply into the ever-unfolding enigma of life perched on the precipice of primal, near-sensory experiences.

In meditation, the intrepid inner explorer can tap into the bodily mysteries of the primordial ocean at unfathomable, as-yet unnamed depths. The wisdom gained through this super-aware state transcends language, though here I rely on words to convey it. It's crucial to remember that reading about the moon is not the same as actually setting foot on its surface.

Enlightenment is sudden - Embodied Oruroboric Consciousness is gradual
In most spiritual traditions, enlightenment is described as a sudden event, which makes sense when one considers the nature of feedback phenomena. The moment the microphone nears the speaker, an instantaneous feedback loop erupts. Ouroboros consciousness often manifests in such abrupt fashion.

However, when it comes to this same consciousness descending into the body, the process is gradual, often unfolding over the course of a lifetime. On this thrilling journey of super-aware individuation, we find contentment even in the smallest advancements, for each little step makes today better than yesterday.

Now it's time to probe further into the sensory experiences that occur when we 'dive high to soar deep'.

MEDITATIVE PIXELLATION OF THE INTEROCEPTIVE REALM


In a state of heightened awareness during meditation, I now dare to extend my hand through words to pose the question: What are sensations of attention really like in themselves—before thoughts have translated them into a language that our verbal consciousness can understand? What are emotions like love or anger, before they are named within our dual consciousness?

Meditative pixellation
At the core of all forms of Meditation is a state of resting conscious alertness, free from thoughts and external or internal sensations. The freedom from external objects occurs in the simple act of closing the eyes.

What then becomes prominently visible and felt are the body's numerous sensations within the field of conscious awareness.

In our ordinary waking state, consciousness is aware of only a minuscule fraction of the body's subtle realm of attention. The moment we close our eyes, consciousness becomes increasingly aware of the existence of the ever-attentive and infinite ocean of sensations.

You can test this claim right here and now by simply closing your eyes for a few seconds.
You are now a hunter, and the prey is yourself.

The next step is to consciously engage with all the bodily sensations in a state of innocent "aha-awareness." 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.'

Let us now in super-awareness identify a previously known and by the mind categorized emotion like for instance anger. In this process anger reveals itself as pixels of abstract sensations.

 

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.

Only the Hyper-Aware Can Break the Conceptual Wall
In this sense, meditative pixelation is metaphorically akin to quantum physics' search for smaller and smaller particles. Both quantum physics and meditative pixelation share the curious fact that the observer affects the observed. An emotion, a sensation, will change the moment we consciously notice it in meditation. The intensity of this process is proportional to the quantitative potency and qualitative clarity of consciousness and attention.
 
Unless your attention and consciousness are healthy, hyper-awake, and focused, you won't be able to break through and delve within yourself. If you are tired, unclear, or stressed, you won't be able to tear down the wall between words and wordlessness.

 

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 Spheric Eversion of the Spaceholer

This spatiality is fluid, capable of expanding and contracting like a balloon, from the infinitely large to the infinitely small, and vice versa. Initially, we discover this sanctuary within our body. However, often after reaching a certain point of no return, the body finds itself as a minuscule droplet within a vast universe cradled by super-awareness.

This next statement is crucial: as you approach the vertical self-referential singularity, the space can expand to such an extent that, as Meister Eckhart put it, the body is more within the soul than the soul is within the body.

Picture this: I remember the first time I felt like I was truly inhabiting my own body. But in a heartbeat, my entire perception shifted, and my body became this tiny little speck in an endless expanse of space. Suddenly, the feeling of being in a body vanished altogether. It was like a tennis ball turning inside out, an absolutely mind-bending realization that permanently changed how I saw the world.

This incredible experience is what can happen happens when short-distance senses, which occur within the realm of awareness, merges and expands into the realm of self-referential consciousness. And when you finally reach the singularity, everything - even light and sound - disappears into the void of pure, unfathomable full nothingness.

God's exit is his entrance.
He broke in to let us out.
Meister Eckhart

It's wild to think about, but it's true: the way in leads out. This journey takes you from the meditation lounge to a limitless expanse beyond anything you could have ever imagined.

The miracle of the spheric eversion is a natural property of the self feeding snake of Ourorobos. As there is an eternal beginning in no beginning and an eternal end in no end, as there is existence in no existence, there is inside in outside and outside in inside. I have become the outside, and the outside has become my inside. This fascinating phenomenon is further explored in the chapter on Shared Fields of Consciousness.
 
In the enveloping darkness, stars invisible in daylight suddenly emerge, uncovering another layer of self-evident obscurity. Within the dark cathedral of our inner night, we can newly perceive the dormant states of our body.

LOCALIZATION OF ENERGY-PIXEL FORMATIONS
It is now time to return to the observation of the pixelated energies inside of us. Now, aware of the stage in which this life-drama is set we are now able to spatially pinpoint our emotions and interoceptive sensations. Where in my body do joy, pain, anger, love, and fear reside? My fear might cluster in my stomach or perhaps tighten in my throat. When contemplating someone I love, a warmth emanates from my chest.

 
Sensory Patterns
Peer inward now and uncover a wondrous realm: The internal, abstractly spatialized electrochemical sensory shapes consist of bundles in myriad forms and variations. These bundles, unique to each individual, are intricately constricted and/or expanded and continuously evolve in response to the sensed environment. 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. These patterns often manifest as independent, abstract entities with a central core and tentacle-like projections. As we become more acquainted with these inner sea creatures, we discover that different zoological sensory patterns belong to different regions of the body's internal ocean.

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 super-awarenes with which you observe them. Typically, 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 places 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 being aware of it. It's astonishing how knowledgeable we are about the world and yet how ignorant we are about ourselves.

Biochemical Sensing instead of known feelings
The next step into the anatomical landscape of emotions comes in the discovery of another unfathomably simple truth. Behind concepts like anger, joy, jealousy, love, and offense lie abstract biochemical sensations:

All our seemingly familiar emotions are, in reality, spatially expanded electrochemical sensory phenomena. These phenomena have distinct qualities depending on where in the inner body-space they are percieved. I will just give few small examples here: The 'energy' we
can super-aware in our hands is almost never unpleasant. The sensations of tingling, warmth or heavyness or what comes up vary from neutral to directly pleasant. In the stomach region we are much more likely to feel, for example the feeling of buttrflies as unpleasant. (unless we are in love)
 
Inner Jellyfish, Fire Coral, and Sea Nettles
Continuing with the zoological imagery, it makes perfect sense to describe these slowly dancing three-dimensional energy patterns as 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.

In this space, a hyper-aware consciousness needs no words. However, to engage a more average, drowsy, and word-contaminated beginner's awareness, it might be useful to name this something as energy. The a-ha registration of energy becomes the lingua franka we use in communicting with all these ancient but 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 perceive this inner world wordlessly, in a form of "aha" recognition that can't be described, only experienced.

From a vulgar Darwinian standpoint, we are not coded to look inward, as it has likely conferred no evolutionary survival advantage up to this stage. All our energy has been reserved for procuring our daily bread. However, it seems at this writing that the same massive internal ignorance is rapidly making our species endangered. Richard Dawkins' soulless human archetype will doom us unless it gains some insight into its own conduct.

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.

CONSCIOUS AWARENES FOR A NEW AGE
We are at a pivotal moment where consciousness is reuniting with the body it had to leave to evolve on its own. This marks a journey towards newly discovered spiritual landscapes. The consciousness has gained strength both through evolutionary maturity and liberation from the physical body.
Now it is time for a deep dive.
 
The Blissful Via Dolorosa of Meditation
Our spirit yearns for the beyond but must now heed the call of Earth and darkness. The first walls this spirit will encounter are the wall of pain and shame. However, the new spirit seeks and loves suffering, and the moment it does, it cannot find it—because suffering can only exist as something we don't want.

This is what pixellation is all about. No sentimental story-telling can go to this war-zone. The sufis knew this secret. In no other tradition, suffering has been so well understood. The sufi knows that by embracing suffering, the spirit gains blissful depth, a new dimension it has never possessed before.While our spirit aspires to the transcendent, it must now attend to the realities of Earth and its darker aspects. The first obstacles this new spirit will confront are the walls of pain and shame. Yet, paradoxically, when this spirit seeks and loves suffering, it finds that suffering eludes it—for suffering can only manifest as something unwanted.

This is the crux of pixellation. Sentimental narratives hold no sway in this complex arena. The Sufis grasped this enigma deeply; in no other tradition has suffering been so fully comprehended. The Sufi understands that in embracing suffering, the spirit acquires a blissful depth, gaining dimensions it never previously possessed.

Fuel of Consciousness
Feelings or "emotions" drive us to act, making them a type of energy. This energy serves as the foundation for consciousness, and recognizing this is the first step in a transformative inner journey.

I use the term "dark energy" to describe the ever-present but mostly ignored sensations in our bodies. This term is not meant to imply something negative, but rather something intensely lived yet unacknowledged.

Becoming constantly aware of this 'pixelated life' inside us is the cornerstone of meditation. Discovering this dark energy requires true courage; it's not for the faint-hearted.
 
The First Step Out of Bed
It's a milestone in our Meditative Life when we discover that each of the emotions we thought we knew so well is actually a specifically configured bundle of electrochemical sensations. Even love dissolves in pure introspective consciousness into an electrochemical bodily sensation in the upper part of the chest. This realization doesn't make love any less mysterious. Our outdated software, our ego-operating system, will never truly grasp what is happening. It will convince itself that meditation is boring and unnecessary. This reminds me of an ayahuasca session I once participated in some years ago. One of my friends had perhaps taken three times more ayahuasca than I had. He sat outside in the cottage where the session was held, staring at the sunset over the ocean. I went out multiple times to check on his state. When I looked into his eyes, I could see he was completely gone. Nevertheless, he told me: "Nothing is happening here. I'm bored. I want to go home."

Here's a summary of my "purely" meditative experiences. You can draw inspiration from them in a kind of open-source field of information, where you alone assemble your spiritual software:

When we stand within ourselves in hyper-awareness, the first thing that happens is the separation of concepts and sensations. Emotions, so to speak, are poured out of their conceptual containers and become pure sensory flows. They lose the habitual conceptualization that enables us to use them in our cognitive metabolism with ourselves and the external world. Here, the original sensations stand on their own, recognized as the primal energy forms they always were. This inner awareness awakens us from a dream-like state, where blind emotional tendrils have been controlling the puppet-show life we believed was our real existence. In this new inner space, we can't simply recite the familiar refrains of our conventional, mundane lives in the same way we used to. Declaring "I love/hate you/them" dramatically and then acting upon it is not as straightforward as before. For here, in the warming light of hyper-consciousness, all feelings, whether it's itchy skin or being in love, are perceived in their abstract, primal oceanic form. In this state of heightened, attentive inward focus, they will be recognized as the elemental sensory particles from which all our seemingly well-known emotions are constructed.

Oh Friend! Understand
The body is like the ocean
Rich with hidden treasures.
Open its innermost chamber
and light its lamp
Mirabai



The Aztek Snake God Queztacoatl

Sensation is the Fuel of Consciousness
In our standard extroverted state of consciousness, we experience these abstract sensations in almost complete inner ignorance. The realization of this ignorance about ignorance occurs for those who look inwardly and understand that the more contact consciousness has with this abstract sensory world, the more awakened it becomes. This is because consciousness, like a light bulb, draws its energy from the abstract electrical charge of sensation.

Sensation itself serves as the fuel for consciousness. Therefore, the spatial expansion and quality of consciousness are proportional to its intensity. This means that consciousness can only evolve into hyper-awareness by meditatively "biting its own sensed tail." The more passionately we look inward at the one who is looking, the more awake consciousness becomes.

Only the sensation that has not yet been named and categorized by the mind can serve as energy to unfurl this dark sail of consciousness. We fall asleep as we name the world. Academics are often highly intelligent sleepwalkers for this reason. I have a dear friend who 'only' has an education as an electrician. Interestingly, his "light of consciousness" is among the most enlightened I've encountered, largely due to its lack of academic conditioning.

Let Me Repeat the Crucial Insight
When we look at the observer, an inner spatialized aware space is born that wasn't there before the inward focus.

Feedback and the Infinity Function
This process is identical to the infinity functions that arise when a camera is aimed at itself. When the camera 'catches sight of itself,' a spiritual door opens in the form of a singular infinity function. Notice how objects from the outer world interact in a fractal-psychedelic way with this infinity function. In meditation, it is not outer objects but inner 'objects,' in the form of wordless sensory phenomena, that interact with the singularly folded mirror of superconsciousness. Precisely for this reason, there is no spatial infinity present within us until we turn towards ourselves.

 

The Psychedelic Journey and the Apollonian Space of Meditation
The dynamic singularity of the introverted camera in the aforementioned video is more akin to a psychedelic journey than the more Apollonian space created in Meditation. Despite the similarities with video introversion, the inner space cultivated through Meditation is usually more 'pure,' even though Meditation is also capable of occasionally generating visions, ranging from pure amusement to grand religious narratives.

The Journey of Hyper-Awareness Back to the Origins of Life
The journey of hyper-awareness towards oneself also opens a portal through which we travel back to the dawn of creation. For space creates time, and time creates space. In the chapter "Consciousness & Evolution," we saw how the human body is a biological recycling of all previous life forms. From this perspective, Meditation is the psychic archaeology that enables us to 'witness' where we come from—not in the form of academic knowledge but infinitely deeper in the form of ecstatically lived felt-witnessed wisdom!

Here, I become aware that the deepest sensations of bliss in the flesh of my body are, in reality, the original cells of the primordial ocean. In the form of the colony of life forms that call themselves 'me,' they continue to sing their original simmering primordial songs. Now, I sense-know where I am from, or more precisely, in which direction I have come from. For the journey back appears to go infinitely further, from the cells of the primordial ocean to the nebulae of stardust. Yes, 'I' continue beyond time and space and now arrive at a new station, a location-less location where everything happens simultaneously right now:

"The happenings of a thousand years ago, days spent millenniums since, are in eternity no further off than is this moment I am passing now; the day to come a thousand years ahead or in as many years as you can count, is no more distant in eternity than this very instant I am in."
— Meister Eckhart

Even this station is not the final stop. It goes on and on and on.

Deep Meditation and Cellular Exploration
In deep Meditation, one has the opportunity to consciously visit one's own dormant primordial body and experience a sea of different operative states. With more neuronal connections than there are particles in the universe, the hyper-awake brain has the opportunity to delve deeper into the mystery of the whole than anything else 'created' in time and space.

In hyper-aware Meditation, I have experimented with turning on and off different layers of these annual rings. The deeper we go, the less awareness there is, and the more non-awake attention. In pure attention, we are actually not awake. A sleepwalker can, despite not being awake, be so attentive that they can balance on the ridge of a roof. The sleepwalker is attentive but not conscious. Similarly, one can have a sensible dialogue with a patient who has just come out of anesthesia. However, the person is not yet awake and, therefore, not self-aware of it. Our animalistic operating systems function perfectly well without consciousness.
 

Hyper-Awareness and the Democracy of Cellular Governance
Hyper-awareness presupposes that the colony of cells and bacteria known as a human being operates under a democratic governance structure where cellular factions collaborate. Hyper-awareness can only arise in a sublime and dynamic inner balance point among all our asynchronous and conflicting bio-operating systems, down to the churning primordial soup of bacteria within us that controls our brain's neurotransmitters.


What hyper-awareness does is make us cognizant of deeper and deeper layers of our impossible existence as asynchronous cell colonies housed under one roof. The more the illuminating and warming light of consciousness touches even the most remote bacteria and cellular 'stars' in our inner galaxy, the better our overall balance becomes. In this sense, we are a galactic microcosm surfing a galactic macrocosm. The more awake one is, the better one finds the ever-shifting balance point on the surfboard of existence. Humanity is the needle's eye where two dimensions collide.