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Observing inner energies should be
an essential part of a life in meditation. 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.
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.
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.
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?
With warm regards,
Gunnar Mühlmann
gunnars@mail.com
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