§07 · The Deep Well · 852 Hz · Pragma · Open Your Eye
What am I not seeing?
In-Room Exercise — What Am I Not Seeing?
Let the body go heavy. Eyes closed, jaw loose, shoulders dropped.
Follow the breath down. Each exhale, a little further in. Let the mind empty itself of its running list — not by force, but by patience. If a thought arrives, let it pass like weather.
(hold silence — two or three minutes)
Now open the inner eye. Don't search for an image. Let one come. Whatever appears — a shape, a color, a figure, a landscape, a feeling, a knowing — receive it. Don't direct it. Don't improve it.
(hold silence — five to ten minutes)
When something has arrived — or even when nothing has — open your eyes and write. What did you see? What did you feel, hear, sense? Write before you speak. The account on the page is yours before the room touches it.
(writing — three to five minutes)
Now take turns reading what you wrote. We are the blind monks, each with our hands on a different part of the elephant. Notice what overlaps. Notice what doesn't.
What am I not seeing?
Practice in the Wild — The Liminal Space
Am I blinded? Am I looking in the right direction? Am I focusing properly? Is my timing off? My vantage point? Is it hidden? Is it camouflaged? Is it even there?
This question asks us to see the unseen: a tall order, for sure. To do this, we are going to have to get very quiet, very still, and very open. Entering into the mindset that allows us to see the unseen takes many seasoned meditators a lifetime of practice. At the very least, we must clear the body of distractions, clear the mind of distractions, and maintain this clarity with steady resolve and patience for an indefinite span of time. Satori comes unannounced. The shadow doesn't volunteer.
So what can we do? We can start by remembering our trust in what we do see.
And for that we may have to be hypnotized. There is a state of awareness between dream and awake where we can access our inner vision and even guide what plays on the cave wall. Some of what we see in this state proves to be clairvoyant, some prescient, some symbolic or archetypal, some wishful or fantastic, some pure nonsense. How to distinguish one from the other is an even more arcane ability than achieving this sight in the first place.
Our practice in the wild is one of gentle wonder at the boundaries of wakeful consciousness. The more curiosity we can bring to these liminal spaces, the easier it becomes to reach them and remain long enough to begin to decipher what is going on. The nemesis of lucid dreaming, astral projection, clairvoyant and inner sight? Control. Clenching, grasping, clawing, craving control. Attachment to outcome will spoil the soup and crash the plane every time.
[Primer to develop: dream journaling · lucid dreaming · astral projection · inner vision — de Stefano, Narby, Jung, McKenna, Dispenza, LaBerge, Waggoner, Monroe. Add LaBerge / Waggoner / Monroe to catalog before publishing.]