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Chaos
often breeds life,
when order breeds habit.

Henry Adams
 

Meditation techniques, gurus & religious organizations

True peace is not always polite. And I admit that especially this page about meditation techniques is not particularly diplomatic. But saying openly what you feel is the truth creates a flow, and this flow can be the river taking you to the ocean of peace. It is a question of intentions and motive. When Jesus in what seemed like anger drove out the merchants of the Temple he confirmed for me: True peace is not always polite.
 
What I write here is not inspired by any books ... it is all hard earned life-experience.
Maybe it is an essential part of the Path that you HAVE to go through mistakes in order to become
life-wise. In this case we could consider waste of time to be the best fertilizer for spiritual growth...

Or maybe you can save yourself from future trouble if you read what I write here... I don't know...
 
From Kindergarten to University
Often teachers of meditation will tell you that it is difficult to reach higher states of spirituality.
Like schoolteachers they tell you that you must advance from level to level - from one class into the next ... And they tell you - as priests have often done the last 2000 years - that you cannot trust yourself and walk the path alone. You need them, their religion, their church, their interface with God.
They will warn you and say it is dangerous to practice meditation without their precise instructions.
So you must come to their school to learn about spirituality. And so you are trapped in a thought-reality-prison that sees spirituality as a product of some activity in time and space. This understanding is a projection of how realities in time and space work: here you can achieve a new car, a new relationship or stronger muscles. 
 
But you cannot body-build spirit. Spirituality is YOU.
It is your very nature and you have an inherent ability to unfold this nature - by itself!               Ramana quote
  
So... all the time a little switch is there inside You - waiting for a gentle  touch...
   
The Indians have a word for this. They call it Sahaj
So we could name this meditation Sahaj meditation.
 

God needs me as much as I need Him - Eckhart
Ramakrishna once said: There are Gurus everywhere, but where are the good devotees?
The truth is that the Gurus and priest need you more than you need them.
They need your money. They need you to give them power.
   
Spiritual help is pure love
Of course there are genuine Divine Inspirators and fine and honest smaller meditation organizations!
You can benefit tremendously from such company.  Spiritual help is equivalent with pure unselfish love. A spiritual love-seed is sprouting in your heart just by your very longing. But its growth is dependant on the motives of the ones who are watering it. The gardener - internal or external - must have pure intentions.
  
Getting help from the "outside"
So you should be very careful when you seek spiritual advice outside your own heart. Here is what Poonjaji says about this:

As the moneychanger tests his gold, you have every right to test your teacher. Don't be mislead.
When you go to the supermarket, you choose what to buy. Why not be even more careful choosing a teacher?
 
Check your chosen inspirator very carefully by the four following criterias:

• THE CONCEPT OF EVIL  •  SEX   •   MONEY-POWER  • MEDITATION TECHNIQUES  •
   
• THE CONCEPT OF EVIL
The inspirator you choose should be without obsession with the concept of EVIL. To fight evil or fight the devil as Christians unfortunately sometimes do, generates an age-old drug in the tribal caveman inside us. It makes him an ecstatic, but fanatic warrior.  Another typical and evil-related way to generate a momentum for one's spiritual cause is to demonize ordinary society in a mirror of spiritual ideals.  Often you will find spiritual books or preachers who start with telling you how bad and materialistic this society is.  After this exaggerated picture of the evils of modern life they will present their way of living in the contrasting light of these evils. It is a too cheap way to sell soap.
 
The world is perfectly imperfect as it is.
The world is a paradisical hell right here and now. There are ups and downs - societies rise and fall - dinos rule and after some time they get extinct and so will man. No meditation or spiritual movement can change that. The whole concept of our present culture as a downfall - a Kali Yug after a previous golden age - is not healthy. Also this concept will be in danger of contaminating spirituality with politics.  Don't make it a goal in itself to strive for a spiritual utopia on the pretext of an enemy picture of the present society. Utopias lies in the future and golden ages in the past. Spiritual life is here and now and free of comparisons with yesterday and tomorrow. Likewise you should not strive to make yourself a better spiritual individual - it is much better to become free from oneself than to free oneself. If you have become free from yourself, freedom of yourself will follow - or maybe not - it is not so important. And this can easily be done either in joyful harmony with a free democratic society - or in quiet solitude beyond an un-free society.
 
So then what about evil?
We don't want to use this cheap petrol on our voyage to the Stars!
If your Inspirator is without any severe enemy-pictures, he is most probably ok. A healthy Inspirator or ring of inspiration should not use too much energy on fighting evils - whether it is from the inside or in the world.
(Maybe I am a borderline case in this respect .... since I here am busy fighting the evils of fighting the evils. I leave you to judge that... At least I can have a good laugh about this paradox.)

Selfirony and humor
A related sign of spiritual health is humor.
Big Gurus just don't like too much humor and especially not if their own attitude is under fire. Thus the highest form of humor an Inspirator can have is a loving self-ironic attitude. Where there is joy and laughter there is absence of ego.
I just love Bharadwaj here when he proclaims with a grin:

May God bless you all... May he bless me too

I think the humor-test is the most efficient on my list of four. Your Guru should be like the one that entered the  Pizza-bar saying: Make me one with everything!      Click here if you need a good laugh
When a group of people are laughing together the groups internal hierarchies will vanish.
Laughter is a sign of true democracy.  
 
Science and humor
Let us take things in a light, easy and not too serious way. This is also my humble advice to scientists who want to explore the realm of meditation. As modern science will know, you cannot separate the scientist from the object he is investigating. So without a good sense of humor he will find nothing of value in his test tubes.
 
• SEX
Getting Spiritual "help" from others is more sensitive than a sexual relationship.
And as little as you can purchase true love from a prostitute, as little you can purchase spiritual knowledge from a therapist. (He is discretely looking at his wrist watch to check when your session is over.)
A spiritual love-help is highly intimate, but it is not personal. This often creates confusion and human beings you help will tend to project their own Divine Love on you. They will glorify you in the light of their own beauty. Therefore an honest Inspirator should be extremely careful having sexual relations with his students. Better not ... because this projection is too easy to misuse, especially by male therapist and gurus. 
   
• MONEY-POWER  ...   How to become an arch-angel with your credit card
As you have probably figured out by now: I am not paying full obedience to formalized meditation techniques. This is a natural consequence of being skeptical towards bigger religious organizations. These organizations define their membership and identity through specific and ritualized meditation techniques. These secret techniques functions as a social semi-language to tell everybody within the organization's organism who is a member and who is not. It is the tribal cave man instinct overruling true divine democracy. Furthermore these different and over-complicated initiation processes allow the students to make distinctions between internal levels of power hierarchies: you pass through new mantras, new initiations processes or new courses from one level into a higher - from kindergarten to higher grades and so on. 
These absolutely non-spiritual hierarchies feeds the age old power-instinct and this power is purchased with hard cash. 
And the cave-man ego inside us likes to think that the meditation course should be expensive in order to be efficient. 
If I don't pay much money it is not a good meditation technique and it is not making me an important arch-angel in your heavenly hierarchy.
 
Money-power and smaller new age organizations
Let me emphasize here that these money-power mechanisms are not so prevalent in the smaller spiritual organizations.  In smaller organizations the "mass" will have a harder time reaching the critical point where individuals are seduced to go beyond their intuitive sense of what is the right path for them. The dark side of the  power of many will not be able to catch momentum. Of course this again is a truth with modifications in the sense that a powerful leader with a "spiri"-psychopathic personality can gather a smaller group around him and lead them astray. But this is not the general picture.
 
A lot of smaller grass root meditation enterprises, healing centers and individual persons are doing a lot of good work here in the west - a world where you need money to function.
   
• TECHNIQUES - Is meditation without proper instructions from a teacher dangerous?
I still haven't told you the basic reason for my reserved attitude towards formalized techniques of meditation .
My experience is that meditation is an inborn ability in all human beings! It is as natural as breathing and digesting.
  
So in a way techniques can be dangerous - they become dangerous in the same moment you try to "technique" yourself - when you use effort in your meditation - when you try to body-build your soul after the devise no pain - no gain.
  
Paradoxically, it is often the teachers that make meditation techniques dangerous. In saying that the technique should be done in a very specific way, they can make this technique harmful for you to practice! Because no two individuals are alike and the only one who can tell you how your meditation looks is the Inner Teacher sitting in your Heart!
Trust your own Divine Stomach-brain in meditation.
 
So here comes my basic advise for the use of all techniques:

DON'T DO ANY EFFORT  - DON'T MANIPULATE YOURSELF WHILE MEDITATING !

As long as you are totally relaxed into non-doing there is the best chance that your natural inborn ability to meditate will be activated.  Then you get "meditated" - spontaneously, effortless, delightful and joyful! Basically it is a human birthright to experience the sweet bliss of meditation!
 
But what will you do if nothing happens after following this advise? Then trust me: nothing is meant to happen! Maybe your intelligent meditative body-brain system is not yet ready to be activated. Then don't go for meditation. At least, I cannot recommend it.
 
Organized religions? - no!  All my respect goes to you and you alone!
So we are basically standing alone in meditation. Like lions we have to cut our own path while moving forward.  
Within the last 30 years I have seen a lot of people buy into expensive meditation-techniques and spiritual hierarchies - including myself! But this is pure "maditation!"  This is how lions are transformed into sheep.
  
You don't need to go on an expensive healing course to be able to heal other people's emotional wounds. You just need to love - to be full of love. And no course teaches you that. Only living your life through non-sentimental feeling can make love flow in and out of you. So actually the spiritual merchants are enemies of true spirituality.
Because this plain truth is not good for their business - if you can do everything just by your natural ability to love, there is no need for their courses. 

To activate your own inherent natural ability to get meditated you must feel-think-believe that it is possible - that such a gift really exist - pretty much in the same way as in the story about The hare that lost its spectacles in Jethro Tulls version of Alice in Wonderland!  You are in Wonderland right now and you have not lost your intro-spectacles! All the time you were searching for them they were sitting right there on your nose. An old Indian folk story tells us about a beggar who was sitting on a hidden treasure of gold without knowing it.   And so are you!
 
But the spiritual merchants first step is to shroud this precious knowing in fog. It is essential for their existence that this knowledge is forgotten. And then they will let you get your own treasure back in small bits through their systems.
It is like kidnapping. First they abduct you inner Divine Child. And then they charge ransom for delivering it back in small pieces. But don't worry. Your inner Galactic Child is indestructible and immortal.
   
Big commercial religious organizations and the power of many
Furthermore many organized religions misuse the power of many to generate an exponential growth momentum. In these mass hysteria movements religion and politics tend to converge. It was and is a cause of sheep-spirituality.  
 
So: AVOID BIG NEW RELIGIOUS MOVEMENTS because:
 
after a time bound period of collective ecstasy their fairy tale will end similar to the story of good old Ikaros.
And the initial ecstasy you felt joining the club will later be paid back in disillusion and regret. But if you, dear reader, have experienced such a spiritual emergency landing don't despair!
It takes a life to become a-live!

The good news is that you have one hundred more chances after each crash. Life is full of valuable crashes - maybe also in the form of an Ikaros-flight with a big commercial charter company promising you a ticket to heaven.
So... when you fall into the ditch you simply get back on the path. Don't make dramas - don't sit in the ditch and cry - just get up and go on and on and on...
Even a beetle can reach the top of the tower just by taking one step at a time and so can you!
   
The credit goes to your personal sincerity & honesty
So what counts in a spiritual life is your personal sincerity, honesty and persistence. Never give up!
In most cases there are no shortcuts - it will take a life to become a-live. But there is really nothing that can match to such a life! This is my life tested guarantee to you! And after some years you can even sit in the ditch and laugh! And actually... THAT is true freedom - Freedom in un-freedom...


And now we are ready for the techniques!

The best way to do meditation is to find some birds of the same feather and flock together. Already Jesus told us that He is where two people are gathered in his name.

The best technique is:

The power of many
Create your own collective meditation happening on a grass root level:
Date some people for meditation

The simple truth is that sitting together,  looking inside with honesty, 
will make everything happen automatically.

All the "techniques" or ways you meditate will evolve 
by itself from your individual and collective "inside"!

And in this forum you can play with the techniques displayed below:

In sitting together like this the teaching will happen on a non-verbal level - from body to body. Almost no instructions are needed. The body is a very intelligent entity!

But take care that your sitting together is kept at a minimal level of organization. Else the power of many will let your happening evolve into the a new religious organization!
 
Keep the attention at the flames in the beginning and avoid thus the ashes at the end - (Indian Tantra tradition)
 
Anyhow you can read the following hints and get inspired. Do by all means also get inspired from all other organizations and their techniques too. Steal from them whatever you like, since nothing anyhow belongs to anyone!
 
And MOST IMPORTANT!
Listen to your own inner gut-voice!
It will always tell you if a technique is suitable for you or not or how you should modify it so it will suit your being-essence. 
 
And finally: rejoice in one successful second of practice instead of making stories about all the meditation you should have done and never did. Remember just one second of meditation is enough to change your life in the same way that the constant pressure of one finger is enough to change the direction if a super-tanker.

 

COLLECTIVE MEDITATIONS

INDIVIDUAL MEDITATIONS

Mantra
meditation

Who am I

SPIRIT-ORIENTED

Eye2Eye
meditation

Healing
hands

Breathing

Dance

Body flow

Eight Ball
Meditation

Dynamic
meditation

Physical
exercise

BODY-ORIENTED

You
can also
use the

On line
meditation
rooms

I am not telling the truth - Believe me - I am telling the truth
Now the question Who am I? is like Russell's paradox:  It cannot produce a clear cut answer. You are a detective investigating your own crimes.   Who am I is always cuts its own roots. Hence it cannot be categorized and fixed by habit, tradition and concepts. It remains an ever fresh question - out of time - a spiraling journey into the now. 
 
One could also use analogies from the quantum physics. Quantum physics tells us that we cannot investigate anything without altering it with our own presence. This is especially true on a subtle atomic level. But consciousness is maybe even more subtle than particles. I am convinced that scientists  will one day be able to define consciousness as an integral part of the quantum physics dimensions. I think that they are already very close in getting this goose out of the bottle.
But even in grosser phenomenons we are altering what we are looking at.
When a scientist  enters a virgin tribal village for the first time, the village is changed by his very presence.
 
Similar the "I" that is the object of our investigation will radically alter in the light of the question. What makes this investigation even more interesting is that it is the "I" that is investigating the "I". The "I" cannot look at "I" without changing the "I" that asked the question.
"I" asking "I" is like putting up two mirrors in front of each other: their reflections will disappear into infinity.
If you connect a video camera with a TV and point the camera towards the TV itself, you will be able to watch infinity in the form of fractals.  
   
And so will "you" if you ask Who am I? -  You will disappear into infinity.
No "I" can live in the light of this quest. Like all creatures of the dark it vanishes with the break of dawn.
You can only take yourself to be this or that by not taking a close look - Your so called "I" loves to watch your back while you are busy in the outside world. But if you turn around you will see: nothing... "I" is a like a ghost of the night. Like an anaerobe bacteria it can only live where there is no oxygen.
 
Hence you are a true living mystery. In living that mystery the world becomes deep and mysterious but in a friendly way since it is your own inner-felt mystery - your "I"-dentity.
 
How to "practice" Who am I?
Poonjaji said that Who am I? only needs to be asked once if it is truly asked from the heart.
This should make sense by now...
But for all of us meditative Tom, Dicks and Harrys it is a question that can alter our lives again and again.
You can use it in your job. Ask yourself in the midst of duty: Who am I?  It is a very interesting exercise thus to meta-level one's own existence as an "I". Sometimes "I" ask myself when teaching in college: Who am I?  And then for sure "I" know that "I" am not a teacher!
  
You can also use Who am I in a more traditional meditative posture with closed eyes. Just take care that Who am I is not becoming a mantra. In a mantra all "meaning" disappears into sound itself. In Who am I? you disappear because you cling to the meaning of the question and only if  Who am I? is asked with great sincerity.

Who am I?
 



 

 Look Papaji! - I rotated the painting in front of him - From every angle Ramana is looking at you!

He did not reply... long time no reaction... I thought He might have overheard my comment.
The TV was damned Indian style loud. I repeated my statement in fierce competition with a crying Heroine and pistol shooting gundas ... Still no reaction... He now seemed to watch the screaming Heroine with full attention...I felt jealous. Then one of Poonjajis most wonderful devotees, Yamuna came to my assistance. She had followed the incident from a distance. She repeated my previous comment while I moved the painting into different positions in front of Him:

 Look Papaji! -  Ramana is looking at you from all sides...

NO!!!...........RAMANA DID NOT LOOK AT ANYONE!!!
  
This moment of roaring silence is still today. First this NO!!! struck like lightening... power-cut ... it was like a thunder bolt at broad daylight... totally unexpected... NO!!! thoughts in this roar.... just clear sky... Then thoughts came back with the most overwhelming insight... In a split second I innerstood what Papaji was pointing at: The very same eyes that I felt were looking at ME were actually eyes that did not look at anyone. Of course the important "I" sees itself as the center of the Universe and thus thinks that Ramana only looks at "ME". But the very same look was - seen from the level of The Greatest Impersonality -  not at all interested in the self important Ego.  RAMANA DID NOT LOOK AT ANYONE ... he only looked at SELF.

No-body is looking at no-one Who am eye? 
The eye is known as the mirror of the soul. But only if it is looking at no-body.
This is my eye... I am looking at you ... or ... no-body is looking at no-one right now... can you feel it?

How to look in a meditative way ... lets look at looking
Now you are invited to relax your looking. Don't focus. When you focus your look you automatically activate the I want something-entity. A focused look is one of the first physical signs of an "I" wanting to make interaction with the world of time and space. This kind of concentrated selective looking is crucial for success in time-space-life: A kind of visual will power will travel - from your Soul - through your eyes - and metaphorically spoken out into your hands of action.
   
To see without seeing is meditation
Now for a moment try to relax while looking. When you relax your look will automatically de-focus.
A defocused look is in a way like seeing without seeing. A defocused look is able to aware everything in the total range of vision. Imagine yourself at the seashore in front of a mighty ocean. With a defocused look you will be able to aware the hole horizontal ocean-line.
 
With this defocused look two things will happen. The power that with the focused look was traveling out of you will instead go in the opposite direction: it will flow back into you... And second: This reverse tidal energy flow will make the sensations in your inner body become more alive.
  
In this state looking becomes synesthetic connected with feeling: You will start to see-feel your inner-body. This will make your initial relaxation evolve into spontaneous meditation. Your inner-look-feeling will tell your body that you have nothing urgent to do - exactly the opposite of what the outgoing focused look will tell you.
   
The intensity of EYE2EYE
We are genetically engineered to feel spontaneously  alerted when looking into another human beings eyes. This alerted awareness is very beneficial for reaching higher meditative states.
You can try out this fact by looking for a minute or so at the eye on the photo just above.
Almost for sure you will feel it to be an intense experience. You can also download music and
try eye-gazing at the photo for 10 minutes or so. It will be a good meditation-practice.
  
The eye-path    to love a stranger
To practice eye-gazing with a partner is a very powerful meditation. Your partner in this meditation can be a loved one or an unknown person. In both cases it can arouse profound and deep feelings.
In meditation we go for the transpersonal and non-sentimental feelings. That means - taken to its full
consequence - that you will come close to a place in yourself where there will be no difference between a brother, a lover or a complete stranger.  Personal love is a superficial thing. You don't need any meditation to experience that.
But initially you might feel more comfortable about the EYE2EYE meditation with a friend or a lover.
 
How to do EYE2EYE meditation
Sit or stand comfortably opposite each other - hold each others hands - feel the energy in hands - take a few deep breaths - feel the stomach area. Look at each others eyes with a defocused gaze. Don't search for anything - let everything happen by itself - just stay open and feel the
inner-body - give up control -  trust that a higher intuitive intelligence is in charge...  
Lose yourself into the eyes of your beloved one. After a short time the face you look at will start to morph into all kinds of faces. Some people here claim that they can recognize the upcoming of previous incarnations. It might be true, but I tend to see it as the mind's tendency to make megalomanic stories as soon as a little bit of energy arises.
 
Leave your faces at the roadside
My advice is to leave these morphing faces as flowers along the roadside. If you lovingly ignore this phase and firmly resist the mind-temptation to create new mythologies, you can be lucky to plunge into an abyss of unknown feeling-sensations and awareness states that are mindblowingly out of reach of language and concepts!
Yes! I dare to say: You don't know what life is able to give you before you have tasted this nectar.
  
Your loved one is a stranger  - every stranger is your loved one
At a certain point you might discover that your loved one is in fact a stranger. You will fall into unknown depths of the person you assumed you knew so well. And ultimately you will arrive at the divine abyss where we are all ONE being: not black or white, no man or woman, noone old or young...
  
Impersonal love is the goal of love
And here you might discover that the eyes are connected with the heart as and in LOVE. Your physical heart might start to jump like a young horse on a springtime meadow. When I  felt this love the first time, it literally felt as an explosion in the chest. And when you feel this impersonal love you will simultaneous realize that this love is a state of body-being IN you. You are love...
 
But don't be confined to these descriptions. We are all wonderfully unique in our commonness.
Trust your own Sinatra Buddha more that any words from me.  Enjoy!
 

Enlightenment is a bodily feeling
Once a German friend of mine was paying a visit when my house was full of people with a Vedantic outlook on life. This philosophy tells us in short that we are not our body. Actually nothing exists. Everything is an illusion. My friend is a kind of meditative body-therapist. He said: Enlightenment is a bodily feeling. This statement was met by a tsunami of laughter from the Vedantist. They considered my friend an amateur in spiritual matters. But I must confess that I any time prefer to let the body "speak".
On the other hand I intuitively innerfeel that the Vedantic knowledge is the ultimate truth.
But when it becomes main stream fashion to proclaim: I am not the body, I get very cautious.
 
Talking heads and the dance of No. One No-Body
In fact only the body can innerstand this truth! And maybe only a finger count of people in this world can truly proclaim: I am not the body with full body-resonance. But words are cheap.
I am not the body is, said from the head, a symptom of intellectualitis. The spiritual ego-entity loves to
speak in terms of ultimate truth. 
And now - have a look at the picture just above. Here you can see a real no-body. In this dance this body has forgotten that it is a body. Dance is a most beautiful expression of the timeless essence. Dance is the dynamic meeting point between infinity and the finite.     Yes... Enlightenment is a bodily feeling.
  
In dance the divine nectar travels to the cellular level of the body
A kind of divine nectar follows you back in time and space after each meditation. The Indians call it soma. The destination of this nectar is your cells. They will "know", rejoice and celebrate after eating this divine food. When dance - in the meaning of celebrative movements - are happening, it secures an optimal transport of soma from the timeless abyss to the cells. You will literally feel the soma-energy as joy in the body.
 
Muscular blocks and the blessings of dance
It is very easy to see the specific structure of ego-entity in a dancing person. A person confined to the ego-entity will dance in certain monotone and predictable patterns.  The ego-entity is dependant on blocks in the body in order to define itself. This is because an ego-entity basically is a no-structure. An average body is filled with muscular blocks that prevents the soma-energy to flow freely.
If you say yes to everything - if you allow any energy-happening to take place in your body - the egg-shell of your ego-entity will brake for shure. Your days of egg-oism will be over and you will raise as a free dancing bird in the sky. 
 
YES is GRACE
But  this process actually happens a long time before you say yes or no. Yes or no are the two hands of the ego-entity. The activation of these hands needs thinking-time, but  life itself is always in the timeless now. So the little poor yes always comes too late to catch the train of life. And the little poor no has anyhow made it a lifestyle never to travel with this train. 
So there must be a deeper YES than the yes of the ego-entity. This deeper YES flows with the river of soma from deep within. It is the soma that automatically clears all your bodily blocks. This deeper YES can never be understood, planned or produced as a product of the ego-entity. This YES is GRACE.
And thus the infinite flows in waves of dance into the finite.   
  
Drown your ego-entity in happiness
And when your body is ultimately happy it will transcend itself. This transcendence happens in the same way as you never notice your foot when it is functioning perfect. Only a hurt foot will cry out for attention.
A perfectly healthy ego-entity and body are the true base of meditative alerted oblivion.
 
In enlightenment the only job left is to sing and dance!
Thus spoke Poonjaji.  The girl you see above is dancing in front of Poonjaji. If her body could say anything it would say: I am not the body. But it does not care to say anything. 
  
How and when to dance
The best way to integrate and impregnate the divine soma in the body is to dance just after meditation.
Just let go and trust that the body possesses a far higher intelligence than what is governed by your conscious "I". Don't plan or control the movements of the dance. Just let them happen. The ego-entity wants to control the dance through rituals or fixed movement patterns. If your body becomes unpredictable while dancing - if it starts making creative movements you have not seen before - then you have become like like a painting that paints itself in the now - you yourself is art - you have become the cosmic dancer!

The dance-field and individuality
The energy-field of dance is tremendously amplified in collectivity. So the most beneficial is to dance together in a group. But while dancing with others: please don't compare your way of the Budhha with the Buddhas you see around you. Collectivity gives an amplified field of consciousness-energy. But collectivity also tends to uniform you and take away your individuality. Don't be a copy-cat - be a true original only dancing on the impulses coming from the inner Kingdom. Your oneness with the group has no uni-form. Close your eyes and find your form the Sinatra-way. The paradox is that our common human divine essence can only be expressed in total honest individuality free of compromises.
Free dance in a group is a most wonderful metaphor for the marriage between the infinite and the finite.

Nadege  and  Dahlia

Of course you can also connect with "others" in  the dance. But let the connection arise from
within. Everything is possible when the ego-entity has left your throne.

What kind of music should be chosen
Chose any music that you like and that appeals to your belly or your heart.

 

Devote your life to awaring  the eight ball - and you will win in the pool of life!
It takes a life to integrate this technique as an effortless happening. But be assured: With each minute you manage to practice this technique you will have turned back your aging clock and rejuvenated your nervous system. 

Often, but definitely not always this eight ball meditation will feel unpleasant. It might even amplify or trigger unpleasant or directly painful sensations. But the very feeling of these phenomena is in itself healing. Take a close look at the pool Master below:

Resting in experience of Integral pain is equivalent with healing!
The body has an inborn ability to heal itself. This natural process is activated in same moment you inner-feel your body. If it feels painful: be assured that a cleaning and healing process is taking place. Energy follows awareness. So if you are awaring your inner-body intensely you will automatically heal it.

Healing energy follows awareness
When the famous Saint Ramakrishna in his old age suffered from throat cancer, a wise man asked him
if it was possible for him to bring his awareness down in the body in order to heal it. Ramakrishna replied that God did not allow him that. It was time to say good bye. But still this advice was full of wisdom...
 
As an example: If you have an infection in your finger your immune system will be more active if you
have your aha-awareness directed towards the finger. The amount of white blood corpuscles attacking the infection will be increased.  
If your spontaneous awareness is taking you to a particular part of your body it is a sign that especially this part of the body needs the rejuvenating energy that your awareness takes along with it.
In general this kind of healing process is very subtle. It cannot replace ordinary medicine when a serious disease has struck. Its great value is of a preventive nature: If you have practiced the eight-ball-meditation for 10 years your chances of a healthy life has increased manifold. 
 
The power of many - healing hands
This is the one great secret of healing that no-one seems to accept. Partly out of commercial reasons but also because it is too obvious: Healing is love is awareness is energy.
If the eight-ball meditation is collectively practiced, its healing power will be exponential.
You can try to sit in silence with closed eyes in a group and make spontaneous and non-intellectually planned contact with your hands - hands in hands on arms, shoulders etc. And you will most certainly discover that the inner awareness-level will raise tremendously.
  
Ignore yourself in full awareness
A zen-buddhist saying goes like this: Take no notice
This statement should be lived and understood in its full paradoxical context:
 
Take no notice - but in full awareness
 
Imagine yourself hanging on the cross in Monthy Python's movie, Life of Brian, singing Always look at the bright side of life.
Thus you should ignore the inner-body-feeling-sensations in full awareness and joyous ease.
Now why is that so?
 
Don't be a drama King or Queen
By ignoring I mean that you should not make dramas and stories about your inner feeling universe. If
you run after this temptation, you will miss the hole point and be in danger of being trapped into narcissism.
You will replace your old ego-entity with a spiritual ego-entity. 
Awaring the often unpleasant inner-body-energies is easily turned into a drama where the ego-entity through narration makes great stories about its heroic suffering like: I am the great sufferer! I suffer like Jesus for the whole mankind. This kind of self narrated: I-suffer-on the behalf of the world-identity is a typical sign of depression.
 
Actually there is no suffering!
Actually there is no suffering at all in the moment you fully accept the totality of your inner-body-sensations. The words pain or suffering are already interpretations of something that awared on a little deeper level is just neutral energy. So  use these words when I in this context, they should be felt as energy-phenomenons. So: Don't call it anything - Or if you if want a concept in the process of awaring: call it energy. This energy will blast your old ego-entity.
Integral suffering is another word for ego crucifixion.
 
Thoughts and understanding prevent feeling
Essentially all thoughts are survival strategies. Thoughts want to direct your energy into taking action in outer life. This takes energy and attention away from your inner feeling body-world.
Furthermore storytelling about inner-body happenings will create a kind of coating: a layer of words
and concepts that will make the pure meeting of awareness and body-energies impossible.
This is the main reason why you should not try to understand anything while meditation is happening. Thought and understanding cannot live simultaneously with pure feeling.
  
INTEGRAL SUFFERING: Lie down and suffer in a symmetrical position.
You can amplify the healing process of the eight-ball meditation  by setting time aside for what we could call an Integral suffering-meditation:
Lie straight on you back in an absolute symmetrical position. Don't use a pillow since the pillow will place your neck in a position that will block the free flow of energy. In this position the nervous signals from your body will be at a maximum. Inner-body-awareness and energy flow are closely interlinked with body-positions. If you place your self in a foetal position you will block the energy-flow in the body. 
  
Integral suffering and breathing
When you start feeling-acknowledge the different body sensations in this position: feelings of pain, tingling, heat, electrical energies, just innocently aware them while breathing deep and slow from you belly. Let your breath go through your mouth and not through your nose.  Feeling  the body sensations is closely interlinked with your breathing pattern. If you stop your breathing the body-energy-flow will stop too.
 
Integral suffering and "old" age
As you grow older you have to set more time aside to repair the body through integral suffering.
It will not be enough just to practice the eight-ball meditation.
Even though we are spiritual people... let us love bodies and do some good to them. Poonjaji once
said:

Even this body will be very happy when you know you are not this body.

What a wonderful paradoxical statement!
 
Spirituality ripens and blooms in old age, (but you have to start while still being young). Therefore - but only up to a certain state - it is very important that the body is kept young and healthy in old age. 
 
The Spiritual dangers of over-entertainment
Don't watch too much television. It will interfere will the awareness-body-repair work that takes place - even if you don't know or do any of these techniques.
In the good old days when there was no gadget to distract the mind, the human mind was most probably much more prone to spontaneous, meditative eight-balling.
 
If you still like to be over-entertained - your choice - it is possible also here to practice a kind of dual awaring - that means you can practice body-innerstanding awareness while TV-gazing.

Don’t be a lazy carrot! – The Bio-dynamics of integral suffering.
If vegetables are sprayed with pesticides, they become sweet instead of bitter. They don't need to develop poison to ward off attacks from parasites - so they afford themselves the luxury to be sweet.

In the modern world we are like fertilized carrots sprayed with protective pesticides in the form of material security. So of course we are sweet - but we are also extremely vulnerable when events in
life turn against us.
Some years ago an Indian commercial airliner was captured by terrorists. After a few days the
terrorist gave up their plans and the passengers were freed.  The Indian passengers and crew went directly home. The Indian pilots even made a party upon arriving home. What happened to the western passengers in the hi-jacked airplane? They were all transported to a hospital where a team of psychologists and doctors treated them for traumas and chocks.
 
As a Senior Master on a collage in the west I can confirm that in spite of a main stream of a very healthy and intelligent youth there is a growing minority of young people with very vulnerable hearts. They are like crystal glasses - they break easily.

I think it is the Soul that is suffering in these young people. They have been overprotected by parents
in an overprotected society with a government that has become a kind of meta-parents.
The souls also needs to taste bitter food in order to grow in the same way that the human body actually needs the poisonous bitterness of organically grown vegetables in order for the body's own anti-poisoning system to work properly.
 
In ancient tribal cultures the youth were initiated into adulthood by the elders trough ceremonies that involved the experience of ritual pain. Only if the youngsters were able to cope with pain they were considered ripe for entering adulthood.
 
I don't want to go further into these matters. They are just mentioned here as pointers towards the fact that the inevitable negative aspects of life are as important as the positive aspects seen from a meditative perspective.  You should be "strong" enough to let these events enter your inner-body.
 
A meditative eigth-balling life says yes to every event taking place in the inner-body-awareness field.
Meister Eckhart tell us to be free from no. He furthermore defines God as the denial of denials.
 
The spiritual warrior is free from no
Every Tom, Dick and Harry can say yes to pleasure. But the spiritual warrior says yes to everything that comes in front of his nose! This is tremendously important... And the reason why I put these thoughts here is that they should be translated into practicality.  This is done through the eight-ball-meditation.
 
The spiritual warrior is a cosmic pool player
In this meditative frame every aspect of life is taken into the inner-body's awareness as an aha - as a
neutral energy-phenomenon. To stay open like this - even when things heat up - does not mean that
you become passive in your daily actions. On the contrary!
Now take a close "look" at your stomach. Do you know that these intestine bandits down under have been ruling your whole life? A lot of action you take in the outer world is simply taken just to prevent unwanted sensations in this area. You are tossed around like a marionette - a stringed puppet - tied to the stomach jelly-fish. Imagine how much easier your life would be if you could deal directly with the belly-culprits - if you could contain them with a big smile like the Indian guy just below from the Kushan period.

 

So don’t try with thought strategies to fix situations in the outer world – first stay with the inner-body sensation that the thought tried to make a strategy against because you could not contain it.
Later, when you have dealt with your inner world you can deal with the other at ease - if it is not already too late and the problem you tried to solve has disappeared by itself.
To body-contain the so called negative sides of life as neutral energy can only be done by a
spiritual warrior. He lives a practical life that allows him to take in pain - to digest not only food but also suffering in the area of the intestines.  This makes him immune to duality. And furthermore
the spiritual warrior will have 50% more energy in his life. How come?
Life energy can be compared to electricity - but as alternating current. The inevitable pains and pleasures of life are like the plus and minus in the current. If you  hunt only for the positive energies out of non-ability to contain the minus your bulb of consciousness will only shine with half power.
Seen from the level of consciousness you simply cannot afford to cut 50% of all life energies!
Consciousness feeds on body-energy! The Indians call it the kundalini-energy. Here all body-energies are neutral as far as consciousness feeds equally well on life's minuses as life's plusses!
 
Human beings who are only world oriented seem to believe that the hunt for the positive is the most important. On the other hand, there is a tendency among spiritual people to blame the world  as a
place of suffering. I think either Buddha was wrong or that he was misunderstood by hear-say-people.
I might also be wrong. But dear read-in-books-or-hear-say-Buddhist. Why are you so afraid of suffering? As far as I see it, this fear has created millions and generations of escapist.
Why not see suffering as a great gift - as a part of life?
All this is not to glorify suffering! Let us not make a technique out of suffering. Let us just accept all dualities as they occur in front of our nose – there is no need to deliberately seeking friction to evolve spiritual life as Gurdjieff did.
 
Life seen from the level of consciousness is neither a place for suffering nor a place for pleasure-hunting.
It simply is as it is as it is : neutral life energy.
 
To aware that fact on the level on the intestines is eight ball-meditation.
 
I think now is the time to enjoy suffering and pleasure and what comes when the two are one: Bliss

or as my beloved Indian Inspirators would put it:
 

SAT	CHIT	ANAND
Peace	Being	Happiness

And after a life-game of this pool you will be

A Soul at home in a body like you in a comfortable sofa.

 ۞