Practice Report - Alfredo D. - Saturday - 9/22/2012
Meditationtime Forum Post
Date: Posted 5 years before Sep 22, 2017
Alfredo 5 years ago
ॐ नमः शिवाय
AM Practice
Woke up during Brahma-Muhurta (4:30 AM).
Svadhyaya: Started, and finished, reviewing “Uddhava Gita Explained”, Chapter 16, “Vedic Incentives”, and Chapter 17, “The Contributing Factors”. Will continue with Chapter 18 “The Supreme Lord Releases the Avanti Brahmin”.
Dedication: Mantra invocation to Lord Shiva for several minutes. Practice dedicated to Lord Shiva.
Breath Infusion: 45 minutes of Bhastrika prânâyâma in various asanas. Around the 30 minutes mark Kundalini was activated while doing a dynamic floor kneeling asana that consists of breath infusion while going up and down with the arms while only the toes of the curved feet touching the ground. It was also activated later with the usual kneeling asana. During this breath infusion session, I experimented for the first time with back-of-head concentration. Whereas before Pratyahar was effected “towards the core-self”, I noticed that it quickly resumes the frontal head position and thoughts ensue. However, this does not occur when the concentration during breath infusion stays at the back of the head.
Question # 1: Is this a valid Pratyahar practice, meaning breath infusion with concentration on the back of the head?
Meditation: Meditation was conducted by concentrating on the back of the head and thus warding off thoughts. It lasted approximately 35 minutes. First, before the back-of-head concentration, I exhausted the lights on the third eye, perhaps the results of the breath infusion. Naad sound was there all along. Meditation mostly consisted of Dharana. One highlight of the meditation was when a lit and sophisticated dining room entered the mind, occupying the whole space of the head. It disappeared when the mind tried to grasp it.
Question # 2: What to do with an image like that of the dining room?
Dream recall: One interesting dream recalled and now forgotten.
Question # 3: It is frustrating that I often recall and then forget the dreams, but I am going to bed very tired...maybe is that?
Pool 5 years ago
Alfredo wrote:
"Question # 1: Is this a valid Pratyahar practice, meaning breath infusion with concentration on the back of the head?"
Pool's Comment:
Thanks for asking this. I was experimenting with it a bit too. However if I concentrate on the back of the head during the breaths or during the retention.. I won't be able to put any attention inside my body, I don't know how that will affect me, and if it's a disadvantage or not..
Alfredo 5 years ago
Gurubai Thomer, we are here to help each other!
MiBeloved 5 years ago
Alfredo wrote:
During this breath infusion session, I experimented for the first time with back-of-head concentration. Whereas before Pratyahar was effected “towards the core-self”, I noticed that it quickly resumes the frontal head position and thoughts ensue. However, this does not occur when the concentration during breath infusion stays at the back of the head.
Question # 1: Is this a valid Pratyahar practice, meaning breath infusion with concentration on the back of the head?
MiBeloved's Response:
In chapter one of the Meditation Pictorial, the pratyahar on the core-self is explained in a series of diagrams which show what must be done to realize this. That however is the first stage of the practice, because actually for a student yogi, there is no such thing as a core-self all by itself.
It is just not a fact that a student yogi can reach the level of the core-self directly like that. The capability is just not there initially.
What is shown as the core-self in those diagrams is at least the core-self surrounded on all sides, spherically by the sense of identity (ahamkara instrument).
But there is also another adjunct which is the buddhi intellect orb. This usually does not surround the core-self as the sense of identity does but rather remains in the frontal part of the head and blocks the core self from using the senses or memories directly.
In the effort to pull the energy back into the core-self what really happens is that the energy, if it is obedient to this desire, will travel into the buddhi intellect orb or better if you really master what it says in chapter one, into the sense of identity.
By retreating to the back of the head, the core-self is able to be itself once and for all. At least there it is free from the criminal Mafia boss which is the buddhi intellect orb. Mafia bosses will not bother to follow some idiot who has no appreciation for strip clubs, casino, liquor and the like.
Thus as soon as the self abandons its needs for the sensual facilities of the subtle body, that self is released from the extortion plan of the intellect. But that is of course only temporary, because the student will again have to return to reality and pay up when the mafia hoods show up for their piece.
Meditation at the back of the head is a more advance pratyahar practice because it shows the student that the idea of pratyahar as a pulling back from the material world is an elementary practice only. It is an important practice but it is elementary nevertheless.
If you think that kindergarten lessons are the poops, then ban it and you will see how many people will graduate from college who do not have a kindergarten education. So the elementary practices are elementary for sure, and yet they are vital.
Instead of pulling back all the energy you invested in the material world (elementary pratyahar), why not just close down your account and be done with it. Turn away from it completely.
Don’t withdraw your money from the bank, just leave it there, tear up your account book and leave the money there. Let the bankers enjoy it.
So the practice of going to the back is this renunciation of the accounts.
A student however if he or she needs to get some satisfaction from pulling back the interest in the material world, then that student will not be pleased with going to the back of the head. That student will have to do the pratyahar in chapter one of the Meditation Pictorial book. In the more advanced stage, one no longer has the need to feel that pulling back effort and so one does the back of the head cut off procedure.
Actually in the Meditation Pictorial book it is mentioned also.
===========================
Alfredo wrote:
Meditation mostly consisted of Dharana..
MiBeloved's Response:
Please avoid using these Sanskrit terms because many students do not know what these words mean. Eventually using these words over and over, they become trivialized and then people read them and it has no meaning. That has happened to the word samadhi which New Age people kick around as their favorite football.
If you use these Sanskrit terms, then get in the habit of always explaining what you mean in plain English immediately following the use of these terms. Do not settle for the old trick which is that it cannot be explained because it is absolute and so on. It is totally wrong and crazy to suggest as some writers do that these words cannot be translated into English, because if that is a fact, it means that so long as we are not speaking and understanding Sanskrit we cannot experience these states and that is crazy, you would agree.
One thing you can do if you enter a state and have no perception in it, or in a state and have no understanding of up or down, is to just say that you were in a non-perception state or in a state which was so subjective that you could not determine objectively what it was. This is better than declaring a void experience or declaring that you were one with the Absolute, if you know what I mean.
You can let students know that it is okay to enter states in which there is no sensible perception because that does happen and will happen in meditation practice.
===========================
Alfredo wrote:
Question # 2: What to do with an image like that of the dining room?
MiBeloved's Response:
So I was out walking last night and there was this long shadow of a lamp post. Now I ask you: What should I have done with it?
So the important thing here is not what the image is but what the state of the psyche is that causes it to perceive like this. What level was the psyche on?
These conditions are a samadhi condition even though you may not recognize it as such. This is because of having a preconceived notion about samadhi and much misinformation of the same.
What happens is that there are two adjuncts and the core-self which are capable of this type of perception.
The lowest is the buddhi intellect orb.
The next highest is the ahamkara sense of identity.
And the highest is the core-self.
All three of these can have that sort of perception.
In that perception either adjunct or the core-self becomes superimposed into some other reality and reads that reality from inside of that reality. This is similar to an X-ray reading the inside of a patient’s body.
The eye of the physician can only read outside the body and if he wants to read inside, he has to cut open the body, but the X-ray can go inside and see from inside.
So that is this type of perception. Now that you have it, there is no need to be skeptical about other yogis who claimed to have used it, previous kriya masters.
===========================
Alfredo wrote:
Dream recall: One interesting dream recalled and now forgotten.
Question # 3: It is frustrating that I often recall and then forget the dreams, but I am going to bed very tired...maybe is that?
MiBeloved's Response:
This happens mostly because of stress; because of having too many issues pending which were not taken care off or because of being connected psychically to many persons who are focused over into the material world heavily.
The mind like a computer has a limited capacity. If however one reaches the limit and goes above that then something gives way, so that one loses something as one gains something.
Because of focusing too much on the material side or because of being influenced or forced to focus on some issue, the mind had to release itself from the memory of the dream. Then that memory sunk down into the subconscious, like when you are floating on an ocean, and then you try to grab something and you manage to hold whatever it is, but at the same time, something else which was between your fingers slipped away because by grabbing with a certain finger, one item, you inevitably relaxed grip on the other item which then sunk into the abyss.
It is still there in the deep but since you are a surface fish, you are not equipped with the kind of body which could go down to the pressures of the deep.
Poor Alfredo, a novice yogi! One of these days, he will make it!
MiBeloved 5 years ago
Thomas wrote:
"Question # 1: Is this a valid Pratyahar practice, meaning breath infusion with concentration on the back of the head?"
Thanks for asking this. I was experimenting with it a bit too. however if I concentrate on the back of the head during the breaths or during the retention.. I won't be able to put any attention inside my body, I don't know how that will affect me, and if it's a disadvantage or not..
MiBeloved's Response:
If you feel to practice at the back of the head, meditation, then do so after your breath infusion session. Do so when you sit to meditate.
Initially it will take tremendous will power to do this successfully because the psyche is designed with the core-self hitched to the intellect in the frontal part of the subtle head.
To change this natural design requires great effort initially.
Alfredo 5 years ago
Thank you very much!
MiBeloved 5 years ago
On incidence which may be clear from what is written above, is why does one see inside a particular body, building, dimension or world. Why that one in particular?
Well the best answer is that by chance one sees a certain thing. Everything is moving more or less, so why do we see a certain comet and no other? Obviously it is not deterministic to us. It happens. There are trillions of reasons why that particular comet was seen but for sure, it is not because of you or me.
So we should just let it go at that, at having seen it and having realized that we had the perception when it passed. Maybe it passed yesterday and the day before but we just did not have the perception and that saved us from the deterministic arrogance.
Sometimes just like that, just as you experienced this here, I am seeing inside a naked woman.
Why?
Now that is really a reason to be arrogant and to find out why?
Then later, Srila Yogesh will chastise like this.
What sort of disciple are you?
What reputation will I have if people know that I am teaching you?
Jivana Kennedy 5 years ago
Alfredo wrote:
Question # 2: What to do with an image like that of the dining room?
Jivana Kennedy's Reply:
Have dinner?
Alfredo 5 years ago
Table wasn't served, mam!
unlimitedsun 5 years ago
Cracking up!
