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.
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
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.
