HYP-GNOSIS
Edgeworks Hypnosis
I consider myself an artist, but my medium tends to drift from psychotherapy and healing, to cutting edge science, and bleeding edge art. My interests flow from sacred geometry fine art to psychotronic technoshamanism, to ephemeral and online performance art. Once in a while an angel visits with a brilliant idea which comes through with blissful fluency.
My expertise is in creativity and extraordinary human development. For good or evil, I am a creative geyser. In past decades I have fallen in love with painting and collage, magick, archetypal and transpersonal psychology, hypnotherapy, metaphor, subquantum physics, consciousness studies, multimedia and chaos theory, but have always remained faithful to my main interest: the interface of psyche and matter ~ that point where psyche matters. It is in finding meaning and expressing that meaning that we exalt our humanity in our individuation.
My expertise is in creativity and extraordinary human development. For good or evil, I am a creative geyser. In past decades I have fallen in love with painting and collage, magick, archetypal and transpersonal psychology, hypnotherapy, metaphor, subquantum physics, consciousness studies, multimedia and chaos theory, but have always remained faithful to my main interest: the interface of psyche and matter ~ that point where psyche matters. It is in finding meaning and expressing that meaning that we exalt our humanity in our individuation.
Hyp-Gnosis & Metaphor Therapy
My Hypnotherapy Practice & Philosophy of Treatment
Over the years I have used many forms of treatment including Transactional Analysis, Gestalt, Dreamwork, NLP, Ericksonian and Metaphor Therapy, Holographic Healing, as well as more conventional clinical hypnotic approaches, including tape reinforcement. The method works if you do.
I prefer process-oriented therapies - experiential journeys. Therapy works best when it emerges from one's inner healer, through one's own imagery, rather than via guided imagery or imported metaphors suggested from outside.
People always wonder if they will lose control when they "go under." Actually, even in hypnosis you can do anything you want and there is no question of being under the control of another. You chose to go along with the structure being provided for the change to take place that you want.
All hypnosis is self-hypnosis and you can bring yourself out at any time. Rather than losing control, you are learning to have more control over your autonomic states and your psychological conditions. You can remove unwanted habits and patterns in relatively short order. Unlike analysis, hypnosis offers brief treatment options.
Epistemological metaphors -- how you know what you know and what it's like -- are a gateway to the subconscious, as are dreams and symptoms. Content-free therapy can be done through metaphor, rather than through directly reliving trauma thereby avoiding re-traumatizing the client.
When people fear entering "the trance state," I casually remind them we are often if not always in a trance of some sort -- being programmed "consumers", staring at TV, white line fever on the highway, love trances, shopping compulsions, eating disorders. All these things get programmed in.
In chaos theory, old forms must break down to make way for new ones to emerge. Healing occurs at the creative edge where new order emerges holistically. Hypnosis is ultimately about rapport and resonance of local and global mind. A small change in attitudes, the messages we send to ourselves, can make huge differences. Change the image and you change the attitudes and feelings associated with it.
We can use our holographic minds to facilitate realization of our 3-D visualizations. Attitudes also are related to our body chemistry, to stress hormones and lifestyle. Emotions control the immune system. The psychosomatic network can be easily accessed through hypnosis. There is a biological, emotional, mental and spiritual aspect to healing.
Over the years I have used many forms of treatment including Transactional Analysis, Gestalt, Dreamwork, NLP, Ericksonian and Metaphor Therapy, Holographic Healing, as well as more conventional clinical hypnotic approaches, including tape reinforcement. The method works if you do.
I prefer process-oriented therapies - experiential journeys. Therapy works best when it emerges from one's inner healer, through one's own imagery, rather than via guided imagery or imported metaphors suggested from outside.
People always wonder if they will lose control when they "go under." Actually, even in hypnosis you can do anything you want and there is no question of being under the control of another. You chose to go along with the structure being provided for the change to take place that you want.
All hypnosis is self-hypnosis and you can bring yourself out at any time. Rather than losing control, you are learning to have more control over your autonomic states and your psychological conditions. You can remove unwanted habits and patterns in relatively short order. Unlike analysis, hypnosis offers brief treatment options.
Epistemological metaphors -- how you know what you know and what it's like -- are a gateway to the subconscious, as are dreams and symptoms. Content-free therapy can be done through metaphor, rather than through directly reliving trauma thereby avoiding re-traumatizing the client.
When people fear entering "the trance state," I casually remind them we are often if not always in a trance of some sort -- being programmed "consumers", staring at TV, white line fever on the highway, love trances, shopping compulsions, eating disorders. All these things get programmed in.
In chaos theory, old forms must break down to make way for new ones to emerge. Healing occurs at the creative edge where new order emerges holistically. Hypnosis is ultimately about rapport and resonance of local and global mind. A small change in attitudes, the messages we send to ourselves, can make huge differences. Change the image and you change the attitudes and feelings associated with it.
We can use our holographic minds to facilitate realization of our 3-D visualizations. Attitudes also are related to our body chemistry, to stress hormones and lifestyle. Emotions control the immune system. The psychosomatic network can be easily accessed through hypnosis. There is a biological, emotional, mental and spiritual aspect to healing.
Dreams, Chaos & Creativity
CHAOS IN DREAMS, HEALING, AND CREATIVITY
CHAOS CONSCIOUSNESS IN PSYCHOTHERAPY
An Experiential Approach and Application to
Dreamwork, Creativity, and Healing
by Iona Miller and Graywolf Swinney, M.A. 1991
Aesculapia Wilderness Retreat, Grants Pass, Oregon
Prepared for the Proceedings of the Society for Chaos Theory in Psychology. Presented at Saybrook Institute, Summer, 1991.
ABSTRACT: Experiential therapy sessions and mysticism demonstrate that as we journey deeper and deeper into the psyche we eventually encounter a state characterized either as "chaotic" or void of images. In a therapeutic context, chaos is experienced as a consciousness state--the ground state. This state is related to healing, dreams, and creativity. Shamanic approaches to healing involve co-consciousness states which lead to restructuring both physical and emotional-mental senses of self.
Dreams, creativity, and healing arise from this undifferentiated "chaotic consciousness." Dreamhealing uses images as portals for consciousness journeys to facilitate transformations ranging from mood alteration to profound physiological changes. Imagery (virtual experience) affects the immune system, activating psychosomatic forces, such as the placebo effect. Chaos-oriented consciousness journeys suggest these states reflect complex phase space, fractal patterns, strange attractors, "the butterfly effect," sensitivity, complex feedback loops, intermittency, and other general dynamical aspects suggested by chaos theory. More than an experiential process, this is a philosophy of treatment --"Chaosophy."
"I'm just asking you to hear yourself. Listen to what you're really saying and to what you think you're saying. Control, control, control. When are you going to realize that nothing can be controlled?" "We live in chaos; it's the central issue in everyone's life. Mack, look around you. Everyone in this parking lot is struggling for control. And you know what it is they're trying to control, each and everyone of them? Fear--they're trying to control their fear." --Steve Martin character in the film, GRAND CANYON
Creative Chaos
We all instantly recognize the fundamental nature of chaos in our lives. The archetypal creation myth posits that all originates in Chaos. We all "get it," intuitively. But generally we are enculturated to fear chaos, to hold it at bay through so-called "control." Chaos is a very personal experience. We relate to it viscerally as well as emotionally and intellectually. When chaos intrudes on our lives, we feel pain, and defend against that pain with fear, rather than embracing the chaotic dynamic.
In psychology, we have had the idea that we need a "strong ego," that we need a stable structure in order to function and cope. But nothing exists in complete order or complete randomness. We live in a chaotic universe. When we are "far from equilibrium" change becomes inevitable. Like a bifurcation point in chaos theory, the old system either falls apart or emerges with a higher degree of order. Our bifurcations state changes are personal crossroads, decision points, initiated by perturbations of our systems.
Chaos theory applied to experiential psychotherapy shows us we actually need to cooperate with chaotic dynamics, to enter a less-rigid process of flow, submitting outworn aspects of the ego to dissolution, which increases our adaptability, helping us evolve.
The phase space of non-linear dynamics is analogous to psychic space--our psychophysical construct of our experience of reality. This complex inner landscape can be mapped and has all the features of phase space: stability, chaos, bifurcation points, and catastrophic changes.
This virtual reality is the world of virtual experience. The landscape of information is richly structured with attractor basins, valleys, and mountains with peaks, saddles, and passes. And it is also hyperdimensional containing a vast amount of implicate or enfolded information.
This landscape (self-scape) can be explored with experiential psychotherapy by faithfully sticking to the imagery emerging from the autonomous imaginal flow. It is a dynamic "ocean of active information" in wave form, with which we can commune, transcending conventional boundaries. The inner journey is one of movement without motion--stretching and folding spacetime.
Imagination is the voice of creativity. It is the primary way we experience soul. Creativity expressed in imagination means experiencing multiple states of consciousness. There is an infinity of realities and states of consciousness. Imagination embodies it's own reality. It is self-revelatory. Meaning dwells in the image like consciousness dwells in the body.
We are learning from chaos theory that physically and mentally we need chaotic disorder to function smoothly. Dipping into that disorder shakes everything loose and allows creative restructuring to occur. Self-organizing systems, both organic and inorganic, naturally evolve toward the "edge of chaos." Many natural systems develop their own dynamic stabilities. Dynamic stability applies to development in chaos theory, and research shows that living systems are naturally self-correcting.
Strength is a measure of what force it takes to destroy or break a rigid structure. True power, on the other hand, is a measure of readily-available energy for immediate use. Strength is rigid, while power is flowing. Empowerment flows forth naturally when we come into intimate therapeutic contact with our stream of consciousness. This stream is most easily observed as our dreams, and manifests in our symptoms.
Water is a natural metaphor of consciousness. The turbulent stream of consciousness flows through the labyrinth of the psyche. It is the source of dis-ease and our healing as indicated by its importance in the cult of Asklepios, the god of dreams and healing. In Greece, the springs of his shrine were channeled into circular labyrinths, forming a concrete metaphor of the healing process.
Healing "springs" from deep within. However, first the old rigid images must be dissolved, and the "universal solvent" is chaos.
Dreams bridge the gap between the spiritual and scientific worldviews. Most would agree that dreams are a truly chaotic phenomenon. Object of scientific inquiry and healing tool of the psychotherapist, they are firmly entrenched in the scientific worldview, although on the fringe. On the mystical side, most religions teach that God, or the nature of the transpersonal Source is revealed through dreams and visionary experience.
Chaos theory provides a comprehensive metaphor for uniting physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual realities. Supreme insights are always metaphorical in expression. But the relationship of chaos and psychotherapeutic effects may be more than metaphorical and subjective. The empirical connection may lie in the mystery of the true nature of consciousness and creativity.
Dreamhealing
One of the authors, Graywolf, discovered a way to journey and guide others into the deepest layers of the psyche while practicing Gestalt dreamwork and shamanism. Therapy at its very best is a matter of changing consciousness and so is shamanism. In dream guiding, all the action lies in going just beyond the boundary from the known and comfortable toward the fear and challenge.
Following the images below the ego deeper into more fundamental consciousness states, he found that clients could easily be guided to the level of chaotic consciousness with therapeutic results. Mapping these levels below behavior, emotional-mental process, belief systems, and mythic zones of imagery, he refined the technique and directions for guidance.
This process (Dreamhealing or Creative Consciousness Process) was not originally based on chaos theory, but observed directly in working with dreams, symptoms, feelings, and healing. The theory came later as an analogy for describing the observations. But chaotic dynamics may be the actual mechanism of its action, rather than merely a metaphor of the transformative process, as were the hydraulic and cybernetic models.
Dreamhealing is not an interpretive or analytical way of understanding a dream, but is a non-linear consciousnesness journey into its healing heart. Dreamhealing is not guided imagery. The guide follows the autonomous flow of psychic imagery, while guiding the focus to deeper, more primal imagery. Then letting go of that form, and entering a yet deeper one, much like entering deeper into a fractal image to find yet deeper images.
In dreamhealing one "becomes" the image which leads to sensing, identifying, empathizing with the essence of a color, shape, form, or pattern--then letting go of form. It is a process of initiation--becoming, sharing, feeling, releasing, yielding, accepting, deepening, intensifying, surrendering, healing, and integrating.
Everything in the dreamtime occurs in the present tense--it is happening. But it is linked in a non-linear fashion--through association--with the past and the future. Becoming the image creates the experience of a new state of consciousness, new sensations, awarenesses, feelings, visceral and kinesthetic reactions, responses, acceptances.
Dreams are chaotic by nature and so is much of shamanic practice. Both evoke the irrational, and of all the healing modalities, these two reflect chaos theory. The forte of shamans is the dream journey or consciousness journey, based on the assumed ability to experience multiple consciousness states other than ordinary consensus reality.
The shaman/therapist acts as guide by entering a co-consciousness state or shared experience with the journeyer. This virtual experience has the ability to create natural consequences or results in real-time. The experience of multiple states of consciousness leads away from egocentricity toward a biocentric perspective. A larger sense of participation counteracts existential alienation.
Small changes in initial conditions (sensitivity) are pumped-up into larger changes, via the "butterfly effect." There is a complementary notion in psychotherapy that one traumatic event can shape a life, and a therapeutic event or experience can re-shape it. Small changes can make phenomenal differences in outcome.
A dream is a stream of chaos, a river of turbulent, undifferentiated consciousness and creativity, flowing through the self-scape of the psyche. It is shaped by the frozen states and complex feedback loops of consciousness, the existential images and patterns that define and mold the self and the reality of our perceptions. When it finally emerges into awareness, the images and plots that are presented to our almost-waking self are reflections of these states. They are another way of seeing the self and the reality we create that is less prejudiced by the ego.
The dream is also much like a hologram. The passage of the consciousness stream through the psyche, and its encounter with the frozen consciousness states, causes ripples and patterns that create images of the deeper self that formed them. Like a hologram or fractal, the whole is contained and re-iterated within any part of the dream, though details may be fuzzy.
Our primal existential image of who and what we are begins with conception (universal, undifferentiated consciousness) and is conditioned by our internal and external experiences. But, of course, not all disease originates here. Trauma at any point can trigger a disruption in the primal self image, setting the "butterfly effect" in motion as the consequences of that trauma permeate the life.
There may be multiple, or re-iterated trauma. This deep existential image contains the essence of our dis-ease.
Chaos permeates our existence from the sub-atomic to universal level, and we react to it with fear and pain. The primal image is revealed in the ongoing process of imagery: dreams, visions, visceral reactions, symptoms, feelings, beliefs, and behavior. Dreams are shaped by these existential images much as they also shape our lives and destinies.
Chaos Consciousness
During consciousness journeys, participants report encountering a place, after moving through the fears and pains, that is totally disorienting, chaotic. They, for example, enter into a gray cloud, and becoming that cloud the mind goes totally blank. Or they enter into a spiral, and giving over to the motion of that spiral, they become so totally disoriented that there is nothing to hang onto.
This experience is what we call "chaotic consciousness," observed within the therapeutic context--undifferentiated, or universal consciousness. It is virtually a place of "all and no structure," a no-boundaries condition, pure potential, the source of creativity. It appears paradoxically as a plenum or a void. The plenum represents hyperarousal; the void hypoarousal. Direct experience of the transpersonal means going back below the ego, into this infinite place, back into this basic formless consciousness--the void or chaos of pre-existence.
Chaotic consciousness is the crucible of our creative spirit. Creativity emerges from chaos. This negentropic, or syntropic principle is the matrix of evolution. Infinite process is constantly creating itself and destroying itself at all levels. Nature repeats herself at all levels of organization, and whatever it is we are that.
Dreams reflect this self-generating, self-iterating and self-organization of patterns, and so does the natural philosophy emerging from the New Sciences. This deterministic philosophy incorporates the human condition, rather than vilifying or pushing it away. Chaos helps us feel our way through a complex, unstable world.
Like the supercritical state of chaotic dynamics, "chaotic consciousness" may be characterized as dynamic, non-linear, paradoxical, self-generating, self-iterating, and self-organizing. It could be likened to an infinite complex of manifolds potentially enfolding infinite information--vortices within vortices within vortices--exploding limitless detail.
There is an essential relationship between healing and irrational consciousness. Irrational consciousness "works" the cure. Somehow that chaotic consciousness, the giving up of the old order, the letting go of the old structure to chaos changes things fundamentally. The next set of imagery emerging out of that chaotic consciousness is always a healing one. So chaos, as the matrix of transformation, seems vitally important at the existential level.
The process of creativity is one of new forms emerging from the void, new forms that have not existed previously. Not merely a juggling of existing forms or ideas into a new configuration, it is more of a quantum leap, a disruption of the old perception into new levels of consciousness and awareness. Chaos theory provides an apt metaphor for this process. In a nutshell, chaos theory states that in all apparent structure is hidden chaos and in chaos there are hidden forms.
We exist in a twilight zone between chaos and order. We flow back and forth between them and that keeps us healthy. Consciousness always strives to take on form. We build a structure and it begins to develop flaws and rigidities. Our illness comes when we hang onto that worn-out structure. But when we let go, we let ourselves flow back into that primal chaos and into total freedom. It is like a heart that periodically develops a chaotic beating pattern to renew itself. We seem to need that within our consciousness, too.
The Transformative Process
Consciousness, creativity, healing, dreaming, and chaos are fundamental to the human condition. They are crucial to our health and ability to move through life. Creativity is also evolution. Dis-ease may be seen as a crisis that forces the organism to expand beyond its limits and evolve. It is part of the evolutionary action of natural selection.
Current research shows that dreams reflect an individual's strategy for survival. Those who adapt, survive. Those who adapt better, thrive. Much of this has to do with our states of consciousness, which lead to creative choice-making. All of a sudden we are free, we are flowing again, and that is the natural condition of health.
Disease, as a crisis, presents the organism with the opportunity to dissolve the old structure and evolve into a new one better adapted to survival. Evolving into a new form, the process of recreating oneself, makes a difference in our view of the disease process. There is no heroic search for a cure, or compulsion to "get rid of" symptoms. The focus of transformation goes to the deepest level.
The implication is that form and rigidity need to periodically give way to non-structure and chaos for renewal and recreation. Much as the "dance of Shiva" destroys the existing forms so that new reality can be created, we can foster the disintegration of outworn images of ourselves, even those seemingly "hard-wired" into our perceptual system.
The process creates a new primal self image, a new attractor as the core of the organism. In chaos theory, when an attractor disappears due to sudden catastrophic change, the system becomes structureless and experiences a term of "transient chaos" before another attractor is found. Order emerges spontaneously from chaos, and tends to degenerate into chaos when forms are obsolete. Creative Consciousness Process follows nature's lead by amplifying and intensifying the movement toward chaos, rather than heroically defending against it.
But letting go of the old forms is frightening. We identify with them, and to a large degree define our sense of the self by them. To forsake them is to dissolve that part of self, to let it die. Most of us are only comfortable in the known territory within the limits of our belief systems, which define our reality and existence. The creative solution often exposes the limits of our beliefs by moving beyond them, thrusting us into unknown territory, which is frightening.
Typically, we try to hang on to the old limits even if it means we are destroyed or have to hang on to our problem rather than letting go to move into a broader awareness and reality. We mark the boundaries of our belief systems with fear and discomfort to keep ourselves safe and enclosed.
To journey into undifferentiated chaos we need to go through the fear which surrounds the pain, then through and beyond the pain to the healing core. This profound and creative state of consciousness provides our form and the core of our being. Here, we create our healing from within. We experience first-hand that personal power (empowerment) arises from within.
To transform we must break free and let go of the cocoon of fear and pain which has kept us prisoner of our own device. We must pass through the discomfort and confusion and let go of what we know and are comfortable with. We must make a quantum leap in consciousness beyond the known into chaos--into the void, like The Fool in the Tarot.
Chaos is inherent in our being and structure just as science has shown. We've always known it intuitively, but the ego seeks to deny it by heroically, one-sidedly adhering to the principles of order and light. Only by entering the dark, by entering chaos, yielding to it, do we allow newly evolved form to come into being--to arise spontaneously, yet deterministically, out of chaos. It is a journey through fear to a Way in which each moment is an act of personal creation and freedom.
The primal self-image functions like an attractor. It forms based on the organism's interaction with the "Not-I" or environment. Under conditions which could be characterized as "far from equilibrium" this image may suddenly dissolve (bifurcation), leading to confusion, disorientation and fragmentation of the personality.
The same process, facilitated (rather than defended against) in therapy can lead through the confusion and ego death to healing, renewal, and rebirth. The new self image is better adapted to current reality. In chaos, the search for information is open and novel solutions emerge.
We are attractor-centered, whether we conceive of that primal attractor as divinity, the higher self, the core self, the Jungian self, the Gestalt self, or that deepest sense of self--our primal self image (including its unconscious aspects). Its pattern appears in all the sensory and extrasensory modalities. The attractor embodies the long-term qualitative behavior of a system.
As an attractor, it contains an infinite complex of potential forms and images which are unfolded over time in unpredictable yet characteristic ways. The personality "revolves" around its strange attractor until a bifurcation occurs and another stable center is found. It might be conceived as a new existential myth, or a different dominant archetype. It is a dynamic multi-sensory image that is not different from our very essence--from ourselves.
By entering into chaotic consciousness new forms arise organically out of chaos. Consciousness is reborn after its sojourn in the underworld of the deep psyche. The "lost soul" is found and retrieved through the shamanic journey in the dreamtime. In embracing chaos, we tune in to its self-directing flow.
In dreamhealing we move deeper into the images, becoming them, rather than interacting or interpreting them. So too with other states of consciousness we encounter. As long as the image is followed back faithfully, the connection can be made from any feeling, symptom, or dream image, old or new. In dealing with illness there is always a specific image that underlies the ailment. That is what to look for when guiding a dream journey.
Healing
In each dream journey we encounter a state of consciousness that is personal experience of primal chaos. The disorienting, dizzying surrender to the tornado or whirlpool is a surrender to chaos, an experience of no-form and total confusion and disorientation. It is like the whirling, twisting molecule of water in the chaotic world of non-laminar flow.
The experience of committing oneself to the fire and becoming it, and as the random flickering of the flames, and the torrid heat, disintegrating into pure energy. Becoming the boiling, flowing every-changing body of molten magma at the core of the earth is felt as a visceral sensation. These are some of the personal, subjective responses to the experience of total chaos.
The closer one is to the chaos consciousness field, the more undifferentiated the imagery is. Archetypal states define its borders. Visual images dissolve into impressionistic colors, visceral sensations, intuitive perceptions, vague awareness, and often culminate in total blankness or lack of any form, or an overwhelmingness of sensation. There may be grayness or cloudiness, and paradoxical sensations of falling or falling-floating within vast emptiness.
Another perception is characterized as a spiral or vortex. It exerts a magnetic draw on the journeyer who is drawn into it. Sensations of spinning and being drawn deeper often cause intense dizziness and disorientation. There may be feelings of flying apart--dismemberment in the centrifugal forces of the vortex. Dissolution might, for example, be experienced as a deep red which leads into a magma-like flowing sensation in which intense heat melts the journeyer.
The imagery tends on one side to zero, and on the other, infinity, like the paradoxical concept of the plenum which is also a void. It appears void because it contains a vast amount of undifferentiated information which is chaotic and overwhelms the senses. It is invisible because it is not-yet-visible. Reaching this state, one has the sense of transformative forces at work--a feeling of almost palpable relief.
The sense of peacefulness and security is the essence of the journey itself and what the guide brings to it. Many other aspects of this "whole brain" state have been described, such as feelings of dimensionlessness, timelessness, and boundarylessness. It has also been called cosmic consciousness.
Many sensations are involved, such as the experience of bubbles or effervescence and tingling in the body, often at the site of a symptom. It may be specific or generalized. It may be expressed as a new primal image that is seen, heard, or perceived in a deeply felt way. Healing manifests as a new emergent order--the implicate becomes explicate as a new perception of self and one's relationship to the whole, of essence to source.
Evolution in consciousness comes with a quantum shift in awareness. That quantum shift occurs during the period in which the evolving structure is in chaos. So if one is in a dreamhealing process, experiencing for example, the multiple consciousness of the Earth Mother as decay, one may follow that to the point of total disintegration.
Since one is identified with that state of consciousness at the time, personal awareness dives down into the chaos, journeying to the most fundamental, primitive or primal condition--the ground state of being. Here a shift is possible as consciousness is totally de-structured, non-linear, yet dynamic, and Here we are simultaneously everything and nothing. We are not separate from the universe: both science (holism, holography, new physics, philosophy) and mystics (shamans, saints, and gurus) tell us so. The whole is reflected in the part and the part is seamlessly unified with the whole. Chaos theory is the result of unitary, iterative processes. Chaotic systems exhibit holistic behavior.
"Solve et Coagula"
As we watch the cycles of nature, we observe that things go into life and death, and rebirth, as energy changes form. If this is happening all around us, what is to make us think we are any different than that?
We are part of nature, unlike the "civilized" or "objective scientific" views which set us apart. So we may, quite naturally, expect to go through the same cycle ourselves, in consciousness as well as in biology. Further, we can trust that and embrace that evolutionary flow of life, death, and rebirth, because in this transformative change lies true stability.
Always, passing through this state, the new order of imagery, thought, emotion, sensory perception reflects a new and less dis-eased sense of being. The deeper self image undercuts the old belief system, and begins to create a new order of being, a new way of perceiving the self and the world.
Chaos provides a new image around which to order the personality and often the physiology. This is an application of the old alchemical maxim, "solve et coagula," dissolve and reintegrate. One half of the process is being able to let go of the focus of attention and enter the chaos. The other half is being able to seize the new order that arises from it. Order is present in the most chaotic state of mind, just as chaos underlies even the most rigid and orderly intellect.
The primal images, the deep multi-sensual experiences and perceptions act like psychic magnets, attracting and ordering energies around them, which echo their shapes and forms. Like fractal patterns displayed on a computer screen, the quantum shift comes when the attractor values are changed. The old image that lies on one side of the chaos experience gives way to a surprising new image that arises from the chaos. Emotions, thinking, and behavior are all affected.
Condensed from the book Dreamhealing: Chaos & the Creative Consciousness Process, by Graywolf Swinney and Iona Miller, c1992. For further information, contact Aesculapia, P.O. Box 301, Wilderville, OR 97543.
RELATIONSHIP TIDAL WAVE
In this session a young woman, who has been separated from her alchoholic husband for some time, recounts a dream which comes up when her divorce proceeding go to court. During the session she re-owns her projected ANIMUS (inner male) and finds new power in her center. Graywolf's comments are ALL CAPS, while her responses are lower case.
WHEN YOU ARE READY TO LET THE DREAM COME IN, JUST ALLOW IT TO ENTER INTO YOUR MIND...THE IMAGES...FEELINGS...AND SENSATIONS. THEN, WHEN YOU ARE IN THE PLACE WHERE YOU ARE READY TO SHARE THE DREAM, DO IT...BUT TAKE YOUR TIME.
I can see John lying on the couch...all I can see is the couch and him. And he's pretty drunk...he can't sit up. I wish he'd just pass out...
BE THIS DRUNKEN MALE...BE THAT BODY...BECOME...AND AS YOU BECOME, SHARE...[she describes her state of consicousness ending with the word "toxic"]...THAT IS A VISCERAL SENSATION...THAT TOXICITY. FOCUS ON THAT NOW. WHAT COLOR IS IT? WHAT SHAPE IS IT? WHAT CONSISTENCY DOES IT HAVE?
It's a yellowish-green, sort of like a blob...sort of frozen. WHAT KIND OF BLOB? IN YOUR IMAGINATION, NOW, BECOME THIS BLOB...THIS YELLOWISH-GREEN BLOB. EXPERIENCE YOURSELF...AND WHEN YOU ARE READY...SHARE WITH ME WHAT THAT EXPERIENCE IS LIKE. [She gives an obviously mentalized description so the therapist urges letting go and she becomes "blue-green"].
SO YOU'RE FEELING THE POTENTIAL OF THE ENERGY? LET GO OF MIND AND INTERPRETATIONS...AND JUST FEEL THE ENERGY AS ENERGY. JUST NOTICE HOW YOU FEEL NOW.
There's a huge, huge tidal wave...STAY WITH IT...STAY WITH THE ENERGY...There's things floating in it, obstructions...there's a lot of power in it...WHERE DOES THAT CARRY YOU? STAY WITH THAT AND TELL ME WHAT YOU NOTICE...Down at the bottom are little things that swim through it, small particles at the mercy of the tide...little things...(AT THIS POINT WE DON'T KNOW IF SHE WILL REGRESS INTO THE HELPLESSNESS OF CHILDHOOD OR DISCOVER SOMETHING NEW).
BRING ONE INTO YOUR MIND NOW...BECOME ONE OF THOSE REALLY TINY THINGS...They're like little pieces of grass, and... BECOME ONE...It's really pleasant--the force--swimming...I AM...I am...FEEL THAT...I am absorbed by the tidal force, it's like a spiral.
I DON'T KNOW QUITE HOW TO SAY THIS, BUT BECOME BOTH THE STUFF FLOATING IN THE BOTTOM OF THE TIDAL WAVE AND THE WAVE...THAT RELATIONSHIP...BECOME THAT VISCERALLY. It's very physical...GIVE IN TO THAT PROCESS AND EXPERIENCE IT...JUST NOTICE, AND REPORT WHEN YOU WANT...[long pause].
I see a shiny black thing...its like an opeing I can go into...it opens into another place..and it seems to open into forever...JUST FEEL...THE SENSATIONS...THE VISCERAL THINGS...WHAT IT'S LIKE IN THERE...[pause]. STAY WITH IT AS LONG AS YOU WANT...WHEN YOU'RE READY TO BRING IT BACK JUST TAKE TWO OR THREE DEEP BREATHS...DON'T HURRY...TAKE YOUR TIME...
It feels like everything is in there [she indicates her abdomen, her power chakra]. THIS IS ABOUT EXPRESSING FEAR...Its like some huge ocean..in there...like in Journey to Center of the Earth, when there is that giant ocean...with power....
AND THERE IS A SENSE OF MALENESS IN THERE WITH THAT, TOO?...Yes...BE AWARE THAT YOU FOUND THAT POWER IN THE PART OF YOURSELF WHICH YOU GAVE THE SYMBOL OF BEING A DRUNK EX-HUSBAND...Rejecting maleness?...UH-HUH! OUT-OF-CONTROL MALENESS...SCARY, LIKE THE TIDE. FROM THE OUTSIDE, IT LOOKED TERRIBLE, BUT WHEN YOU WENT INSIDE, YOU FOUND SOMETHING. I WOULD SAY THAT SOMETHING ON THE SURFACE, YOUR PERSONALITY AND YOUR EGO, KEEPS YOU FROM THIS PLACE. IT IS AS CLOSE TO BEING ABLE TO FOCUS ON IT. IT IS ALREADY IN THERE, IT IS YOU...IT IS A STATE OF YOUR CONSCIOUSNESS.
I CAN'T TAKE YOU ANY PLACE THAT ISN'T IN YOU ALREADY. YOU'D BEEN SCARED OFF BY THIS POWER WHICH WAS HIDING BEHIND THIS IMAGE OF A DRUNKEN MAN.
That's right. Now my whole body breathes with it. Being in the blob was not a pleasant thing...later it felt good, but I didn't see colors at that time. It became pleasant when I became the tidal wave. The pain turned into pleasure. THAT IS CHARACTERISTIC OF THE DREAM JOURNEY. YOU HAVE TO GO INTO THE PAIN, FEAR, OR DISTRUST TO FIND THE POWER.
We are a really a powerful form of energy which takes on the form of a mind and body. That form is based on the kinds of experience this life energy encounters, and it stores that experience in the form of images. Essentially that is the essence of this work, to go to those images, and change or transform those images, to make the energy available for us. In this case, the toxicity was where the energy was being held.
As we hit traumatic experiences in childhood, they rob us of some of our power, manifesting as defenses which just keep us from getting there. In the image itself is where all the stuff is stored. The purpose of the work is to get to that image. For this client, this was tied up in the image of the drunken man. Within that was this image of toxicity or poison. The poison had the shape, the essence of an unpleasant green color. What that yellow-green told me was that it has to do with love expression and power expression.
That fits in with the fact it was expressed as a male power-figure she was once intimate with. That is an image she had carried around in her. She chose to express it that day as a sort of blue-green, which when she became it, gave her access to the tidal power.
Those images that we store need to be transformed, because when we restructure the images, our personality and body take on the actual new shape of these images. Change the image and you change the attitudes associated with it. If you only understand it intellectually, it just changes the defense systems. We go deeper into the image, into CHAOS, and shake it loose. That brings catharsis.
CONCEPTION DREAM JOURNEY
This healing took place over a two-day period during our annual gathering on CHAOS AND CONSCIOUSNESS. This is a mature, cosmopolitan woman, with a beautiful poetic spirit. She recounted her dream the morning after her arrival.
I go into a bedroom where Jeannie Eagle is sitting on a large bed in a flowing white dress. Her dark locks of hair fall around her shoulders, and the contrast is like a photo negative of Mt. Shasta. I go forward and lightly kiss Jeannie on her forehead. There is a shadowy presence in the room that I take to be Graywolf.
Graywolf initiated the process. JUST LIE DOWN AND GET COMFORTABLE...START BY JUST BREATHING...RELAX AND ENTER YOUR DREAM...RE-EXPERIENCE YOUR DREAM...AND THEN WHEN YOU'RE READY, WALK ME THROUGH THE DREAM WITH YOU.
I'm approaching the bed...slowly, not cautiously...just very confidently...I'm seeing a person sitting on the bed [a woman]...I'm experiencing contrasts...the pristine whiteness of the clothing, and the very somber, dark and black hair...I'm feeling...ahhhh, the edges of the white and the edges of the black meeting, kind of jagged...
JUST GIVE OVER TO THAT SENSATION OF JAGGED MEETING PLACES NOW...JUST EXPERIENCING...AND TELL ME WHAT YOU NOTICE...I'm coming to where they...ah...possibility of interchange...the black becomes white and the white becomes black. JUST EXPERIENCE THAT...BE THAT...FEEL THAT AS YOU BECOME THAT AND GO THROUGH THAT...FEEL IT VISCERALLY...WHERE DO YOU NOTICE THAT IN YOUR BODY? In my stomach, here. BRING YOUR ATTENTION TO THAT SENSATION OR FEELING...DOES IT HAVE A SHAPE?...ANY DISTINGUISHING THINGS YOU NOTICE ABOUT IT?
It's like it comes and it goes...The black is blacked and the white is frozen...JUST GIVE OVER TO THAT NOTION...THAT THOUGHT...LET GO NOW OF ANY OTHER SENSE OF SELF YOU HAVE...AND JUST BECOME THAT FLOW...FEEL YOUR SIDES...YOUR LEFT SIDE, YOUR RIGHT SIDE...JUST FEEL THE FLOW NOW...BECOME NOTHING BUT THAT KIND OF MOTION...
The black side's getting very violent like dark waves lashing...its like shark's fins, the jagged part. GIVE IN TO THAT BLACKNESS, THE SHARKNESS, THE ANGRINESS...BECOME IT...LET GO OF THE REST NOW AND JUST BECOME THE BLACK...THE SHARKNESS...Feels like a sword...darksword...FEEL YOUR ESSENCE...BECOME IT NOW...TRUST YOUR IMAGINATION. I press into soft flesh...BREATHE DEEP...IS THAT IN YOUR STOMACH, TOO? It's in my legs, in my thighs...GIVE OVER TO THAT...FEEL IT NOW...STAY WITH IT...I'LL GO WITH YOU INTO THE PAIN...COME WITH ME INTO THE PAIN.
It feels like penetration...OK...JUST EXPERIENCE THAT NOW...It's very painful...STAY WITH IT...I feel I'll cry...IT'S OK...It's myyyy...JUST FEEL...DEEPER, DEEPER...FEEL...WHAT'S HAPPENING NOW? I'm feeling like there's a knight with armor on...it's black...all of its black...BECOME THAT...BECOME HIM...COME INTO YOUR SHADOW WITH ME...STAY WITH IT...WITH ME...IT'S OK, I'M WITH YOU...STAY WITH IT. Hmm...I'm seeing a lot of yellow flames; its like I want to jump in...DO IT!...I walk in and its just like red coals (YEAH) and I feel like a devil dancing on them...FEEL THAT ENERGY...FEEL YOUR HEAT...Horns!...I'm all red, and...STAY WITH IT.
WHAT'S HAPPENING NOW? It's all turning into ashes and turning into snow!...it's a lot cooler...FEEL THAT...it's very soft to touch...Hhhmmmm...I'm going into the ground like a seed...FEEL IT NOW....JUST FEEL IT VISCERALLY...hmmmm, roots...going down...deeper...DEEPER....deeper...ALL THE WAY NOW, WITH THEM...AND BECOME THE ROOTS...
I'm finding gold down under the earth...it's some kind of light...BECOME THAT LIGHT NOW...MOVE OVER TO IT...LET GO OF BODY, LET GO OF FORM...BECOME THE LIGHT...DEEP, DEEP LIGHT...It's all like a ball, very white, and all around is the darkness...like a void...and the lower I get, the lower it goes, and I can't quite reach it...but I'm trying...
JUST STAY WITH WHERE YOU'RE AT...EXPERIENCE THE VOID...BECOME THE VOID...LOOK IN NOW...BECOME THE VOID...FEEL YOURSELF AS THE VOID...WHAT YOU'RE EXPERIENCING...[she breathes very deeply]...SHARE WITH ME...
Ah...I was there...I think I thought that if I breathed it would go away, but it's still there, and I could breath and it's still there...WHERE ARE YOU?...I'm like in a...ah, a quarry hole all filled with water and the sun shifts down it, and I'm inside it and I don't need to breath, and I'm just like part of that water, and at the same time, its like air...it has a lot of little motes...motes...
STAY WITH THAT...JUST ACCEPT THAT...FEEL...THIS IS ONE OF THE GIFTS OF THE DREAM TO YOU...IT'S A HEALING PLACE FOR YOU...
MY THOUGHT IS THAT THERE IS A SENSATION OF TINGLING WITH THIS...yes!...JUST ALLOW THAT TO BE...LET THAT WORK ON YOU...THAT'S THE HEALING...IT COMES FROM WITHIN.
Wow!!!...hmm,hmmmm that was the primal energy! Oh, I can feel it in my whole body as I said that, all the way up my legs! I can feel my whole body tingling!!!
THAT'S THE HEALING...JUST STAY WITH IT NOW...Hmmmm....STAY WITH IT, AND FEEL IT AS LONG AS YOU NEED...WHEN YOU ARE READY TO COME BACK, BRING THE HEALING WITH YOU...AND ALL YOU HAVE TO DO IS JUST TAKE THREE DEEP BREATHS AND LET YOUR EYES OPEN...BUT DON'T COME BACK UNTIL YOU'RE READY...WHEN YOU DO COME BACK JUST COME BACK TO THE SURFACE OF THE DREAM, AND I WILL MEET YOU THERE BECAUSE THERE IS ANOTHER PLACE I'D LIKE TO TAKE YOU.
I feel like a very fuzzy caterpillar...MMM-UHUH....that's eaten a lot...it's so fat and it's soft....hmmmmm. ARE YOU READY TO GO BACK UP TO THE SURFACE OF THE DREAM NOW?...hmmm...Uhuh. THERE'S A PRESENCE IN THAT DREAM...A GUIDE...DO YOU FEEL IT? I'm seeing all of her now...a woman like a fairy with butterfly wings. DO YOU FEEL THEM ON YOUR OWN SHOULDERS?...Yeah, Ok, Ok, uhuh...they're sprouting...irridescent wings!
OK...STAY THERE...those wings, its like the same irridescence as those motesMOTES [spoken simultaneously]. [NOTE: in Greek, PSYCHE means butterfly]
GO JUST A LITTLE BIT DEEPER NOW...AND FEEL THE ENERGY THAT YOU RADIATE...THESE COLORS...Uhuh...what's in my mind is that passing over the clouds over the mountains coming into Medford there is a double circular rainbow around the shadow of the plane...below. The shadow of the plane is in the exact middle always, and I'm sitting right beyond the wing, and I'm looking down and seeing this rainbow...and it's now like I'm in the center of that rainbow...mmmm-huh...two rainbows...I see all these colors over here.
JUST LET THEM ENTER YOU...FEEL THEM...FEEL THE CENTER...I'm the center spot...MAY I TOUCH YOU?...Yeah...[touches heart center].............[long pause]........[eyes open]...WELCOME BACK!
INTEGRATION
Now I'm feeling...oh, I'm feeling like integrating the feeling of the movement of the plane and all those vibrations...and at the same time the rainbows and the shadow of the plane are constant. That's what I'm feeling. I'm feeling like there is a constancy in the movement, you see? UHUH...It can't be but it is...THAT'S A GOOD LESSON, ISN'T IT? Yeah, yeah...yeah....THERE IS WISDOM THERE, YOU'VE TOUCHED SOME WISDOM THERE...Yeah, I'm a very wise person...YOU BET...Oh wow!
THE STRUCTURE IS THE ILLUSION; IT'S THE MOVEMENT THAT IS THE REALITY. THE STRUCTURE OF THE PLANE, THE THINGS WE THINK ARE PERMANENT, THEY ARE THE ILLUSIONS. Yes. FEEDBACK....COMMENTS?
Thank you...I've got my mama's tit again. When I was saying I'm a wise person, I usually can't say that, like its not good to be presumptuous, right. And it's like its OK to be yourself...UHUH, THAT'S A NICE GIFT FROM THE DREAM, TOO.
She recalls her song where she wrote, "Woman trust your body's wisdom..." Graywolf asks her if she has had trouble in her legs. She says "No," but refers to month-old distress on the bottom of her forearms, slight arthritis, etc.
THE TINGLING IN THE BODY, THOUGH, THERE WAS SOMETHING WITH THAT. Oh, [emphatically], the tingling was...SEEMED INTENSE...yes, it was very intense, yea. At the beginning of this session I was asking myself what this is about. And its about coming here. It's about my mother going 50 years ago to Farther South Camp, a forerunner of Outward Bound.
I stayed home on the farm to cook, sweep, and wash for my father and brothers. And my mother went galavantin' off, just like I am now. Only no one has to cook and sweep for me. My kids are grown. Still, though, I was having the image of the woman going off to the wilderness to find herself. THAT'S SOMETHING OF THE ESSENCE OF WHY YOU'RE HERE THEN. Hmmmhuh. And I was hearing this morning a poem that my mother loved, I think by William Blake or John Dunn, someone of the mystical faith. It goes:
Every morning lean thine arms upon the windowsill of heaven; And contemplate thy God. And then with a vision freshen thy heart and go forth into the day.
I am not knowing if I have permission to lean my hands on the windowsill of Heaven. [she rubs her arms where she has complained of the distress]. YOU JUST DID...SO YOU MUST...Like I just did right now...So I do...So I don't need that! [She makes shaking motions as if to let go of that energy].
SO AGAIN, JUST ON THE OTHER SIDE OF FEAR IS THE POWER. JUST ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE FEAR AND THE PAIN. JUST EXPRESSING THE FEAR AND THE PAIN DOES NOTHING MORE THAN HONOR IT...IT DOESN'T TAKE YOU TO THE OTHER SIDE OF IT. ALSO, THERE WAS AN INNOCENCE OF SHADOW IN THIS DREAM. YOU WENT INTO THE SHADOW SIDE IN THE SHARK...aimed at the light...I had a momentary flashback to a time when my husband with Alzheimer's tried to make love to me. It was scary, but I saved myself from that situation. Before that fear of my father that summer my mother went to camp.
I'D LIKE TO SUGGEST THAT YOU EXPERIENCED EVEN ONE LEVEL DEEPER...THIS IS CONJECTURE AT THIS POINT...I THINK YOU EXPERIENCED THE MOMENT OF YOUR CONCEPTION. Hhmmm...the sperm, yes...going into the egg...the motes. I HAD VERY MUCH THE FEELING OF THAT WHILE YOU WERE THERE. Uhuh, uhuh. That thought was the penetration there--that's very interesting--AHA! THAT'S WHERE SOME OF THE INITIAL IMAGES WERE FORMED. SOME OF THE VERY MOST PRIMAL IMAGES THAT SHAPED YOU. Hmmmm.
Graywolf...Now that I just am this ovum being penetrated by the sperm, I'm no longer violated...how about that! I'm created, I'm not violated! THAT'S A BIG CHANGE IN IMAGE, ISN'T IT. Uhuh, tremendous! Tremendous, tremendous. ITS A VERY FUNDAMENTAL CHANGE IN YOURSELF IN TERMS OF WHO YOU ARE NOW. I feel like Jesus when they pierced him in the side...aha, aha, aha. That tingling...now its in my back and it's in my arms.
I was still resisting until now that sperm penetrating, and until it did, I couldn't be whole. Now I'm feeling like I'm in the Fallopian tube, and going into the uterus, and I can implant, and grow to where I am now. Its a wonderful feeling, because I can be inside my mother and here at the same time. I can be in all of those places. It's wonderful!
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CHAOS CONSCIOUSNESS IN PSYCHOTHERAPY
An Experiential Approach and Application to
Dreamwork, Creativity, and Healing
by Iona Miller and Graywolf Swinney, M.A. 1991
Aesculapia Wilderness Retreat, Grants Pass, Oregon
Prepared for the Proceedings of the Society for Chaos Theory in Psychology. Presented at Saybrook Institute, Summer, 1991.
ABSTRACT: Experiential therapy sessions and mysticism demonstrate that as we journey deeper and deeper into the psyche we eventually encounter a state characterized either as "chaotic" or void of images. In a therapeutic context, chaos is experienced as a consciousness state--the ground state. This state is related to healing, dreams, and creativity. Shamanic approaches to healing involve co-consciousness states which lead to restructuring both physical and emotional-mental senses of self.
Dreams, creativity, and healing arise from this undifferentiated "chaotic consciousness." Dreamhealing uses images as portals for consciousness journeys to facilitate transformations ranging from mood alteration to profound physiological changes. Imagery (virtual experience) affects the immune system, activating psychosomatic forces, such as the placebo effect. Chaos-oriented consciousness journeys suggest these states reflect complex phase space, fractal patterns, strange attractors, "the butterfly effect," sensitivity, complex feedback loops, intermittency, and other general dynamical aspects suggested by chaos theory. More than an experiential process, this is a philosophy of treatment --"Chaosophy."
"I'm just asking you to hear yourself. Listen to what you're really saying and to what you think you're saying. Control, control, control. When are you going to realize that nothing can be controlled?" "We live in chaos; it's the central issue in everyone's life. Mack, look around you. Everyone in this parking lot is struggling for control. And you know what it is they're trying to control, each and everyone of them? Fear--they're trying to control their fear." --Steve Martin character in the film, GRAND CANYON
Creative Chaos
We all instantly recognize the fundamental nature of chaos in our lives. The archetypal creation myth posits that all originates in Chaos. We all "get it," intuitively. But generally we are enculturated to fear chaos, to hold it at bay through so-called "control." Chaos is a very personal experience. We relate to it viscerally as well as emotionally and intellectually. When chaos intrudes on our lives, we feel pain, and defend against that pain with fear, rather than embracing the chaotic dynamic.
In psychology, we have had the idea that we need a "strong ego," that we need a stable structure in order to function and cope. But nothing exists in complete order or complete randomness. We live in a chaotic universe. When we are "far from equilibrium" change becomes inevitable. Like a bifurcation point in chaos theory, the old system either falls apart or emerges with a higher degree of order. Our bifurcations state changes are personal crossroads, decision points, initiated by perturbations of our systems.
Chaos theory applied to experiential psychotherapy shows us we actually need to cooperate with chaotic dynamics, to enter a less-rigid process of flow, submitting outworn aspects of the ego to dissolution, which increases our adaptability, helping us evolve.
The phase space of non-linear dynamics is analogous to psychic space--our psychophysical construct of our experience of reality. This complex inner landscape can be mapped and has all the features of phase space: stability, chaos, bifurcation points, and catastrophic changes.
This virtual reality is the world of virtual experience. The landscape of information is richly structured with attractor basins, valleys, and mountains with peaks, saddles, and passes. And it is also hyperdimensional containing a vast amount of implicate or enfolded information.
This landscape (self-scape) can be explored with experiential psychotherapy by faithfully sticking to the imagery emerging from the autonomous imaginal flow. It is a dynamic "ocean of active information" in wave form, with which we can commune, transcending conventional boundaries. The inner journey is one of movement without motion--stretching and folding spacetime.
Imagination is the voice of creativity. It is the primary way we experience soul. Creativity expressed in imagination means experiencing multiple states of consciousness. There is an infinity of realities and states of consciousness. Imagination embodies it's own reality. It is self-revelatory. Meaning dwells in the image like consciousness dwells in the body.
We are learning from chaos theory that physically and mentally we need chaotic disorder to function smoothly. Dipping into that disorder shakes everything loose and allows creative restructuring to occur. Self-organizing systems, both organic and inorganic, naturally evolve toward the "edge of chaos." Many natural systems develop their own dynamic stabilities. Dynamic stability applies to development in chaos theory, and research shows that living systems are naturally self-correcting.
Strength is a measure of what force it takes to destroy or break a rigid structure. True power, on the other hand, is a measure of readily-available energy for immediate use. Strength is rigid, while power is flowing. Empowerment flows forth naturally when we come into intimate therapeutic contact with our stream of consciousness. This stream is most easily observed as our dreams, and manifests in our symptoms.
Water is a natural metaphor of consciousness. The turbulent stream of consciousness flows through the labyrinth of the psyche. It is the source of dis-ease and our healing as indicated by its importance in the cult of Asklepios, the god of dreams and healing. In Greece, the springs of his shrine were channeled into circular labyrinths, forming a concrete metaphor of the healing process.
Healing "springs" from deep within. However, first the old rigid images must be dissolved, and the "universal solvent" is chaos.
Dreams bridge the gap between the spiritual and scientific worldviews. Most would agree that dreams are a truly chaotic phenomenon. Object of scientific inquiry and healing tool of the psychotherapist, they are firmly entrenched in the scientific worldview, although on the fringe. On the mystical side, most religions teach that God, or the nature of the transpersonal Source is revealed through dreams and visionary experience.
Chaos theory provides a comprehensive metaphor for uniting physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual realities. Supreme insights are always metaphorical in expression. But the relationship of chaos and psychotherapeutic effects may be more than metaphorical and subjective. The empirical connection may lie in the mystery of the true nature of consciousness and creativity.
Dreamhealing
One of the authors, Graywolf, discovered a way to journey and guide others into the deepest layers of the psyche while practicing Gestalt dreamwork and shamanism. Therapy at its very best is a matter of changing consciousness and so is shamanism. In dream guiding, all the action lies in going just beyond the boundary from the known and comfortable toward the fear and challenge.
Following the images below the ego deeper into more fundamental consciousness states, he found that clients could easily be guided to the level of chaotic consciousness with therapeutic results. Mapping these levels below behavior, emotional-mental process, belief systems, and mythic zones of imagery, he refined the technique and directions for guidance.
This process (Dreamhealing or Creative Consciousness Process) was not originally based on chaos theory, but observed directly in working with dreams, symptoms, feelings, and healing. The theory came later as an analogy for describing the observations. But chaotic dynamics may be the actual mechanism of its action, rather than merely a metaphor of the transformative process, as were the hydraulic and cybernetic models.
Dreamhealing is not an interpretive or analytical way of understanding a dream, but is a non-linear consciousnesness journey into its healing heart. Dreamhealing is not guided imagery. The guide follows the autonomous flow of psychic imagery, while guiding the focus to deeper, more primal imagery. Then letting go of that form, and entering a yet deeper one, much like entering deeper into a fractal image to find yet deeper images.
In dreamhealing one "becomes" the image which leads to sensing, identifying, empathizing with the essence of a color, shape, form, or pattern--then letting go of form. It is a process of initiation--becoming, sharing, feeling, releasing, yielding, accepting, deepening, intensifying, surrendering, healing, and integrating.
Everything in the dreamtime occurs in the present tense--it is happening. But it is linked in a non-linear fashion--through association--with the past and the future. Becoming the image creates the experience of a new state of consciousness, new sensations, awarenesses, feelings, visceral and kinesthetic reactions, responses, acceptances.
Dreams are chaotic by nature and so is much of shamanic practice. Both evoke the irrational, and of all the healing modalities, these two reflect chaos theory. The forte of shamans is the dream journey or consciousness journey, based on the assumed ability to experience multiple consciousness states other than ordinary consensus reality.
The shaman/therapist acts as guide by entering a co-consciousness state or shared experience with the journeyer. This virtual experience has the ability to create natural consequences or results in real-time. The experience of multiple states of consciousness leads away from egocentricity toward a biocentric perspective. A larger sense of participation counteracts existential alienation.
Small changes in initial conditions (sensitivity) are pumped-up into larger changes, via the "butterfly effect." There is a complementary notion in psychotherapy that one traumatic event can shape a life, and a therapeutic event or experience can re-shape it. Small changes can make phenomenal differences in outcome.
A dream is a stream of chaos, a river of turbulent, undifferentiated consciousness and creativity, flowing through the self-scape of the psyche. It is shaped by the frozen states and complex feedback loops of consciousness, the existential images and patterns that define and mold the self and the reality of our perceptions. When it finally emerges into awareness, the images and plots that are presented to our almost-waking self are reflections of these states. They are another way of seeing the self and the reality we create that is less prejudiced by the ego.
The dream is also much like a hologram. The passage of the consciousness stream through the psyche, and its encounter with the frozen consciousness states, causes ripples and patterns that create images of the deeper self that formed them. Like a hologram or fractal, the whole is contained and re-iterated within any part of the dream, though details may be fuzzy.
Our primal existential image of who and what we are begins with conception (universal, undifferentiated consciousness) and is conditioned by our internal and external experiences. But, of course, not all disease originates here. Trauma at any point can trigger a disruption in the primal self image, setting the "butterfly effect" in motion as the consequences of that trauma permeate the life.
There may be multiple, or re-iterated trauma. This deep existential image contains the essence of our dis-ease.
Chaos permeates our existence from the sub-atomic to universal level, and we react to it with fear and pain. The primal image is revealed in the ongoing process of imagery: dreams, visions, visceral reactions, symptoms, feelings, beliefs, and behavior. Dreams are shaped by these existential images much as they also shape our lives and destinies.
Chaos Consciousness
During consciousness journeys, participants report encountering a place, after moving through the fears and pains, that is totally disorienting, chaotic. They, for example, enter into a gray cloud, and becoming that cloud the mind goes totally blank. Or they enter into a spiral, and giving over to the motion of that spiral, they become so totally disoriented that there is nothing to hang onto.
This experience is what we call "chaotic consciousness," observed within the therapeutic context--undifferentiated, or universal consciousness. It is virtually a place of "all and no structure," a no-boundaries condition, pure potential, the source of creativity. It appears paradoxically as a plenum or a void. The plenum represents hyperarousal; the void hypoarousal. Direct experience of the transpersonal means going back below the ego, into this infinite place, back into this basic formless consciousness--the void or chaos of pre-existence.
Chaotic consciousness is the crucible of our creative spirit. Creativity emerges from chaos. This negentropic, or syntropic principle is the matrix of evolution. Infinite process is constantly creating itself and destroying itself at all levels. Nature repeats herself at all levels of organization, and whatever it is we are that.
Dreams reflect this self-generating, self-iterating and self-organization of patterns, and so does the natural philosophy emerging from the New Sciences. This deterministic philosophy incorporates the human condition, rather than vilifying or pushing it away. Chaos helps us feel our way through a complex, unstable world.
Like the supercritical state of chaotic dynamics, "chaotic consciousness" may be characterized as dynamic, non-linear, paradoxical, self-generating, self-iterating, and self-organizing. It could be likened to an infinite complex of manifolds potentially enfolding infinite information--vortices within vortices within vortices--exploding limitless detail.
There is an essential relationship between healing and irrational consciousness. Irrational consciousness "works" the cure. Somehow that chaotic consciousness, the giving up of the old order, the letting go of the old structure to chaos changes things fundamentally. The next set of imagery emerging out of that chaotic consciousness is always a healing one. So chaos, as the matrix of transformation, seems vitally important at the existential level.
The process of creativity is one of new forms emerging from the void, new forms that have not existed previously. Not merely a juggling of existing forms or ideas into a new configuration, it is more of a quantum leap, a disruption of the old perception into new levels of consciousness and awareness. Chaos theory provides an apt metaphor for this process. In a nutshell, chaos theory states that in all apparent structure is hidden chaos and in chaos there are hidden forms.
We exist in a twilight zone between chaos and order. We flow back and forth between them and that keeps us healthy. Consciousness always strives to take on form. We build a structure and it begins to develop flaws and rigidities. Our illness comes when we hang onto that worn-out structure. But when we let go, we let ourselves flow back into that primal chaos and into total freedom. It is like a heart that periodically develops a chaotic beating pattern to renew itself. We seem to need that within our consciousness, too.
The Transformative Process
Consciousness, creativity, healing, dreaming, and chaos are fundamental to the human condition. They are crucial to our health and ability to move through life. Creativity is also evolution. Dis-ease may be seen as a crisis that forces the organism to expand beyond its limits and evolve. It is part of the evolutionary action of natural selection.
Current research shows that dreams reflect an individual's strategy for survival. Those who adapt, survive. Those who adapt better, thrive. Much of this has to do with our states of consciousness, which lead to creative choice-making. All of a sudden we are free, we are flowing again, and that is the natural condition of health.
Disease, as a crisis, presents the organism with the opportunity to dissolve the old structure and evolve into a new one better adapted to survival. Evolving into a new form, the process of recreating oneself, makes a difference in our view of the disease process. There is no heroic search for a cure, or compulsion to "get rid of" symptoms. The focus of transformation goes to the deepest level.
The implication is that form and rigidity need to periodically give way to non-structure and chaos for renewal and recreation. Much as the "dance of Shiva" destroys the existing forms so that new reality can be created, we can foster the disintegration of outworn images of ourselves, even those seemingly "hard-wired" into our perceptual system.
The process creates a new primal self image, a new attractor as the core of the organism. In chaos theory, when an attractor disappears due to sudden catastrophic change, the system becomes structureless and experiences a term of "transient chaos" before another attractor is found. Order emerges spontaneously from chaos, and tends to degenerate into chaos when forms are obsolete. Creative Consciousness Process follows nature's lead by amplifying and intensifying the movement toward chaos, rather than heroically defending against it.
But letting go of the old forms is frightening. We identify with them, and to a large degree define our sense of the self by them. To forsake them is to dissolve that part of self, to let it die. Most of us are only comfortable in the known territory within the limits of our belief systems, which define our reality and existence. The creative solution often exposes the limits of our beliefs by moving beyond them, thrusting us into unknown territory, which is frightening.
Typically, we try to hang on to the old limits even if it means we are destroyed or have to hang on to our problem rather than letting go to move into a broader awareness and reality. We mark the boundaries of our belief systems with fear and discomfort to keep ourselves safe and enclosed.
To journey into undifferentiated chaos we need to go through the fear which surrounds the pain, then through and beyond the pain to the healing core. This profound and creative state of consciousness provides our form and the core of our being. Here, we create our healing from within. We experience first-hand that personal power (empowerment) arises from within.
To transform we must break free and let go of the cocoon of fear and pain which has kept us prisoner of our own device. We must pass through the discomfort and confusion and let go of what we know and are comfortable with. We must make a quantum leap in consciousness beyond the known into chaos--into the void, like The Fool in the Tarot.
Chaos is inherent in our being and structure just as science has shown. We've always known it intuitively, but the ego seeks to deny it by heroically, one-sidedly adhering to the principles of order and light. Only by entering the dark, by entering chaos, yielding to it, do we allow newly evolved form to come into being--to arise spontaneously, yet deterministically, out of chaos. It is a journey through fear to a Way in which each moment is an act of personal creation and freedom.
The primal self-image functions like an attractor. It forms based on the organism's interaction with the "Not-I" or environment. Under conditions which could be characterized as "far from equilibrium" this image may suddenly dissolve (bifurcation), leading to confusion, disorientation and fragmentation of the personality.
The same process, facilitated (rather than defended against) in therapy can lead through the confusion and ego death to healing, renewal, and rebirth. The new self image is better adapted to current reality. In chaos, the search for information is open and novel solutions emerge.
We are attractor-centered, whether we conceive of that primal attractor as divinity, the higher self, the core self, the Jungian self, the Gestalt self, or that deepest sense of self--our primal self image (including its unconscious aspects). Its pattern appears in all the sensory and extrasensory modalities. The attractor embodies the long-term qualitative behavior of a system.
As an attractor, it contains an infinite complex of potential forms and images which are unfolded over time in unpredictable yet characteristic ways. The personality "revolves" around its strange attractor until a bifurcation occurs and another stable center is found. It might be conceived as a new existential myth, or a different dominant archetype. It is a dynamic multi-sensory image that is not different from our very essence--from ourselves.
By entering into chaotic consciousness new forms arise organically out of chaos. Consciousness is reborn after its sojourn in the underworld of the deep psyche. The "lost soul" is found and retrieved through the shamanic journey in the dreamtime. In embracing chaos, we tune in to its self-directing flow.
In dreamhealing we move deeper into the images, becoming them, rather than interacting or interpreting them. So too with other states of consciousness we encounter. As long as the image is followed back faithfully, the connection can be made from any feeling, symptom, or dream image, old or new. In dealing with illness there is always a specific image that underlies the ailment. That is what to look for when guiding a dream journey.
Healing
In each dream journey we encounter a state of consciousness that is personal experience of primal chaos. The disorienting, dizzying surrender to the tornado or whirlpool is a surrender to chaos, an experience of no-form and total confusion and disorientation. It is like the whirling, twisting molecule of water in the chaotic world of non-laminar flow.
The experience of committing oneself to the fire and becoming it, and as the random flickering of the flames, and the torrid heat, disintegrating into pure energy. Becoming the boiling, flowing every-changing body of molten magma at the core of the earth is felt as a visceral sensation. These are some of the personal, subjective responses to the experience of total chaos.
The closer one is to the chaos consciousness field, the more undifferentiated the imagery is. Archetypal states define its borders. Visual images dissolve into impressionistic colors, visceral sensations, intuitive perceptions, vague awareness, and often culminate in total blankness or lack of any form, or an overwhelmingness of sensation. There may be grayness or cloudiness, and paradoxical sensations of falling or falling-floating within vast emptiness.
Another perception is characterized as a spiral or vortex. It exerts a magnetic draw on the journeyer who is drawn into it. Sensations of spinning and being drawn deeper often cause intense dizziness and disorientation. There may be feelings of flying apart--dismemberment in the centrifugal forces of the vortex. Dissolution might, for example, be experienced as a deep red which leads into a magma-like flowing sensation in which intense heat melts the journeyer.
The imagery tends on one side to zero, and on the other, infinity, like the paradoxical concept of the plenum which is also a void. It appears void because it contains a vast amount of undifferentiated information which is chaotic and overwhelms the senses. It is invisible because it is not-yet-visible. Reaching this state, one has the sense of transformative forces at work--a feeling of almost palpable relief.
The sense of peacefulness and security is the essence of the journey itself and what the guide brings to it. Many other aspects of this "whole brain" state have been described, such as feelings of dimensionlessness, timelessness, and boundarylessness. It has also been called cosmic consciousness.
Many sensations are involved, such as the experience of bubbles or effervescence and tingling in the body, often at the site of a symptom. It may be specific or generalized. It may be expressed as a new primal image that is seen, heard, or perceived in a deeply felt way. Healing manifests as a new emergent order--the implicate becomes explicate as a new perception of self and one's relationship to the whole, of essence to source.
Evolution in consciousness comes with a quantum shift in awareness. That quantum shift occurs during the period in which the evolving structure is in chaos. So if one is in a dreamhealing process, experiencing for example, the multiple consciousness of the Earth Mother as decay, one may follow that to the point of total disintegration.
Since one is identified with that state of consciousness at the time, personal awareness dives down into the chaos, journeying to the most fundamental, primitive or primal condition--the ground state of being. Here a shift is possible as consciousness is totally de-structured, non-linear, yet dynamic, and Here we are simultaneously everything and nothing. We are not separate from the universe: both science (holism, holography, new physics, philosophy) and mystics (shamans, saints, and gurus) tell us so. The whole is reflected in the part and the part is seamlessly unified with the whole. Chaos theory is the result of unitary, iterative processes. Chaotic systems exhibit holistic behavior.
"Solve et Coagula"
As we watch the cycles of nature, we observe that things go into life and death, and rebirth, as energy changes form. If this is happening all around us, what is to make us think we are any different than that?
We are part of nature, unlike the "civilized" or "objective scientific" views which set us apart. So we may, quite naturally, expect to go through the same cycle ourselves, in consciousness as well as in biology. Further, we can trust that and embrace that evolutionary flow of life, death, and rebirth, because in this transformative change lies true stability.
Always, passing through this state, the new order of imagery, thought, emotion, sensory perception reflects a new and less dis-eased sense of being. The deeper self image undercuts the old belief system, and begins to create a new order of being, a new way of perceiving the self and the world.
Chaos provides a new image around which to order the personality and often the physiology. This is an application of the old alchemical maxim, "solve et coagula," dissolve and reintegrate. One half of the process is being able to let go of the focus of attention and enter the chaos. The other half is being able to seize the new order that arises from it. Order is present in the most chaotic state of mind, just as chaos underlies even the most rigid and orderly intellect.
The primal images, the deep multi-sensual experiences and perceptions act like psychic magnets, attracting and ordering energies around them, which echo their shapes and forms. Like fractal patterns displayed on a computer screen, the quantum shift comes when the attractor values are changed. The old image that lies on one side of the chaos experience gives way to a surprising new image that arises from the chaos. Emotions, thinking, and behavior are all affected.
Condensed from the book Dreamhealing: Chaos & the Creative Consciousness Process, by Graywolf Swinney and Iona Miller, c1992. For further information, contact Aesculapia, P.O. Box 301, Wilderville, OR 97543.
RELATIONSHIP TIDAL WAVE
In this session a young woman, who has been separated from her alchoholic husband for some time, recounts a dream which comes up when her divorce proceeding go to court. During the session she re-owns her projected ANIMUS (inner male) and finds new power in her center. Graywolf's comments are ALL CAPS, while her responses are lower case.
WHEN YOU ARE READY TO LET THE DREAM COME IN, JUST ALLOW IT TO ENTER INTO YOUR MIND...THE IMAGES...FEELINGS...AND SENSATIONS. THEN, WHEN YOU ARE IN THE PLACE WHERE YOU ARE READY TO SHARE THE DREAM, DO IT...BUT TAKE YOUR TIME.
I can see John lying on the couch...all I can see is the couch and him. And he's pretty drunk...he can't sit up. I wish he'd just pass out...
BE THIS DRUNKEN MALE...BE THAT BODY...BECOME...AND AS YOU BECOME, SHARE...[she describes her state of consicousness ending with the word "toxic"]...THAT IS A VISCERAL SENSATION...THAT TOXICITY. FOCUS ON THAT NOW. WHAT COLOR IS IT? WHAT SHAPE IS IT? WHAT CONSISTENCY DOES IT HAVE?
It's a yellowish-green, sort of like a blob...sort of frozen. WHAT KIND OF BLOB? IN YOUR IMAGINATION, NOW, BECOME THIS BLOB...THIS YELLOWISH-GREEN BLOB. EXPERIENCE YOURSELF...AND WHEN YOU ARE READY...SHARE WITH ME WHAT THAT EXPERIENCE IS LIKE. [She gives an obviously mentalized description so the therapist urges letting go and she becomes "blue-green"].
SO YOU'RE FEELING THE POTENTIAL OF THE ENERGY? LET GO OF MIND AND INTERPRETATIONS...AND JUST FEEL THE ENERGY AS ENERGY. JUST NOTICE HOW YOU FEEL NOW.
There's a huge, huge tidal wave...STAY WITH IT...STAY WITH THE ENERGY...There's things floating in it, obstructions...there's a lot of power in it...WHERE DOES THAT CARRY YOU? STAY WITH THAT AND TELL ME WHAT YOU NOTICE...Down at the bottom are little things that swim through it, small particles at the mercy of the tide...little things...(AT THIS POINT WE DON'T KNOW IF SHE WILL REGRESS INTO THE HELPLESSNESS OF CHILDHOOD OR DISCOVER SOMETHING NEW).
BRING ONE INTO YOUR MIND NOW...BECOME ONE OF THOSE REALLY TINY THINGS...They're like little pieces of grass, and... BECOME ONE...It's really pleasant--the force--swimming...I AM...I am...FEEL THAT...I am absorbed by the tidal force, it's like a spiral.
I DON'T KNOW QUITE HOW TO SAY THIS, BUT BECOME BOTH THE STUFF FLOATING IN THE BOTTOM OF THE TIDAL WAVE AND THE WAVE...THAT RELATIONSHIP...BECOME THAT VISCERALLY. It's very physical...GIVE IN TO THAT PROCESS AND EXPERIENCE IT...JUST NOTICE, AND REPORT WHEN YOU WANT...[long pause].
I see a shiny black thing...its like an opeing I can go into...it opens into another place..and it seems to open into forever...JUST FEEL...THE SENSATIONS...THE VISCERAL THINGS...WHAT IT'S LIKE IN THERE...[pause]. STAY WITH IT AS LONG AS YOU WANT...WHEN YOU'RE READY TO BRING IT BACK JUST TAKE TWO OR THREE DEEP BREATHS...DON'T HURRY...TAKE YOUR TIME...
It feels like everything is in there [she indicates her abdomen, her power chakra]. THIS IS ABOUT EXPRESSING FEAR...Its like some huge ocean..in there...like in Journey to Center of the Earth, when there is that giant ocean...with power....
AND THERE IS A SENSE OF MALENESS IN THERE WITH THAT, TOO?...Yes...BE AWARE THAT YOU FOUND THAT POWER IN THE PART OF YOURSELF WHICH YOU GAVE THE SYMBOL OF BEING A DRUNK EX-HUSBAND...Rejecting maleness?...UH-HUH! OUT-OF-CONTROL MALENESS...SCARY, LIKE THE TIDE. FROM THE OUTSIDE, IT LOOKED TERRIBLE, BUT WHEN YOU WENT INSIDE, YOU FOUND SOMETHING. I WOULD SAY THAT SOMETHING ON THE SURFACE, YOUR PERSONALITY AND YOUR EGO, KEEPS YOU FROM THIS PLACE. IT IS AS CLOSE TO BEING ABLE TO FOCUS ON IT. IT IS ALREADY IN THERE, IT IS YOU...IT IS A STATE OF YOUR CONSCIOUSNESS.
I CAN'T TAKE YOU ANY PLACE THAT ISN'T IN YOU ALREADY. YOU'D BEEN SCARED OFF BY THIS POWER WHICH WAS HIDING BEHIND THIS IMAGE OF A DRUNKEN MAN.
That's right. Now my whole body breathes with it. Being in the blob was not a pleasant thing...later it felt good, but I didn't see colors at that time. It became pleasant when I became the tidal wave. The pain turned into pleasure. THAT IS CHARACTERISTIC OF THE DREAM JOURNEY. YOU HAVE TO GO INTO THE PAIN, FEAR, OR DISTRUST TO FIND THE POWER.
We are a really a powerful form of energy which takes on the form of a mind and body. That form is based on the kinds of experience this life energy encounters, and it stores that experience in the form of images. Essentially that is the essence of this work, to go to those images, and change or transform those images, to make the energy available for us. In this case, the toxicity was where the energy was being held.
As we hit traumatic experiences in childhood, they rob us of some of our power, manifesting as defenses which just keep us from getting there. In the image itself is where all the stuff is stored. The purpose of the work is to get to that image. For this client, this was tied up in the image of the drunken man. Within that was this image of toxicity or poison. The poison had the shape, the essence of an unpleasant green color. What that yellow-green told me was that it has to do with love expression and power expression.
That fits in with the fact it was expressed as a male power-figure she was once intimate with. That is an image she had carried around in her. She chose to express it that day as a sort of blue-green, which when she became it, gave her access to the tidal power.
Those images that we store need to be transformed, because when we restructure the images, our personality and body take on the actual new shape of these images. Change the image and you change the attitudes associated with it. If you only understand it intellectually, it just changes the defense systems. We go deeper into the image, into CHAOS, and shake it loose. That brings catharsis.
CONCEPTION DREAM JOURNEY
This healing took place over a two-day period during our annual gathering on CHAOS AND CONSCIOUSNESS. This is a mature, cosmopolitan woman, with a beautiful poetic spirit. She recounted her dream the morning after her arrival.
I go into a bedroom where Jeannie Eagle is sitting on a large bed in a flowing white dress. Her dark locks of hair fall around her shoulders, and the contrast is like a photo negative of Mt. Shasta. I go forward and lightly kiss Jeannie on her forehead. There is a shadowy presence in the room that I take to be Graywolf.
Graywolf initiated the process. JUST LIE DOWN AND GET COMFORTABLE...START BY JUST BREATHING...RELAX AND ENTER YOUR DREAM...RE-EXPERIENCE YOUR DREAM...AND THEN WHEN YOU'RE READY, WALK ME THROUGH THE DREAM WITH YOU.
I'm approaching the bed...slowly, not cautiously...just very confidently...I'm seeing a person sitting on the bed [a woman]...I'm experiencing contrasts...the pristine whiteness of the clothing, and the very somber, dark and black hair...I'm feeling...ahhhh, the edges of the white and the edges of the black meeting, kind of jagged...
JUST GIVE OVER TO THAT SENSATION OF JAGGED MEETING PLACES NOW...JUST EXPERIENCING...AND TELL ME WHAT YOU NOTICE...I'm coming to where they...ah...possibility of interchange...the black becomes white and the white becomes black. JUST EXPERIENCE THAT...BE THAT...FEEL THAT AS YOU BECOME THAT AND GO THROUGH THAT...FEEL IT VISCERALLY...WHERE DO YOU NOTICE THAT IN YOUR BODY? In my stomach, here. BRING YOUR ATTENTION TO THAT SENSATION OR FEELING...DOES IT HAVE A SHAPE?...ANY DISTINGUISHING THINGS YOU NOTICE ABOUT IT?
It's like it comes and it goes...The black is blacked and the white is frozen...JUST GIVE OVER TO THAT NOTION...THAT THOUGHT...LET GO NOW OF ANY OTHER SENSE OF SELF YOU HAVE...AND JUST BECOME THAT FLOW...FEEL YOUR SIDES...YOUR LEFT SIDE, YOUR RIGHT SIDE...JUST FEEL THE FLOW NOW...BECOME NOTHING BUT THAT KIND OF MOTION...
The black side's getting very violent like dark waves lashing...its like shark's fins, the jagged part. GIVE IN TO THAT BLACKNESS, THE SHARKNESS, THE ANGRINESS...BECOME IT...LET GO OF THE REST NOW AND JUST BECOME THE BLACK...THE SHARKNESS...Feels like a sword...darksword...FEEL YOUR ESSENCE...BECOME IT NOW...TRUST YOUR IMAGINATION. I press into soft flesh...BREATHE DEEP...IS THAT IN YOUR STOMACH, TOO? It's in my legs, in my thighs...GIVE OVER TO THAT...FEEL IT NOW...STAY WITH IT...I'LL GO WITH YOU INTO THE PAIN...COME WITH ME INTO THE PAIN.
It feels like penetration...OK...JUST EXPERIENCE THAT NOW...It's very painful...STAY WITH IT...I feel I'll cry...IT'S OK...It's myyyy...JUST FEEL...DEEPER, DEEPER...FEEL...WHAT'S HAPPENING NOW? I'm feeling like there's a knight with armor on...it's black...all of its black...BECOME THAT...BECOME HIM...COME INTO YOUR SHADOW WITH ME...STAY WITH IT...WITH ME...IT'S OK, I'M WITH YOU...STAY WITH IT. Hmm...I'm seeing a lot of yellow flames; its like I want to jump in...DO IT!...I walk in and its just like red coals (YEAH) and I feel like a devil dancing on them...FEEL THAT ENERGY...FEEL YOUR HEAT...Horns!...I'm all red, and...STAY WITH IT.
WHAT'S HAPPENING NOW? It's all turning into ashes and turning into snow!...it's a lot cooler...FEEL THAT...it's very soft to touch...Hhhmmmm...I'm going into the ground like a seed...FEEL IT NOW....JUST FEEL IT VISCERALLY...hmmmm, roots...going down...deeper...DEEPER....deeper...ALL THE WAY NOW, WITH THEM...AND BECOME THE ROOTS...
I'm finding gold down under the earth...it's some kind of light...BECOME THAT LIGHT NOW...MOVE OVER TO IT...LET GO OF BODY, LET GO OF FORM...BECOME THE LIGHT...DEEP, DEEP LIGHT...It's all like a ball, very white, and all around is the darkness...like a void...and the lower I get, the lower it goes, and I can't quite reach it...but I'm trying...
JUST STAY WITH WHERE YOU'RE AT...EXPERIENCE THE VOID...BECOME THE VOID...LOOK IN NOW...BECOME THE VOID...FEEL YOURSELF AS THE VOID...WHAT YOU'RE EXPERIENCING...[she breathes very deeply]...SHARE WITH ME...
Ah...I was there...I think I thought that if I breathed it would go away, but it's still there, and I could breath and it's still there...WHERE ARE YOU?...I'm like in a...ah, a quarry hole all filled with water and the sun shifts down it, and I'm inside it and I don't need to breath, and I'm just like part of that water, and at the same time, its like air...it has a lot of little motes...motes...
STAY WITH THAT...JUST ACCEPT THAT...FEEL...THIS IS ONE OF THE GIFTS OF THE DREAM TO YOU...IT'S A HEALING PLACE FOR YOU...
MY THOUGHT IS THAT THERE IS A SENSATION OF TINGLING WITH THIS...yes!...JUST ALLOW THAT TO BE...LET THAT WORK ON YOU...THAT'S THE HEALING...IT COMES FROM WITHIN.
Wow!!!...hmm,hmmmm that was the primal energy! Oh, I can feel it in my whole body as I said that, all the way up my legs! I can feel my whole body tingling!!!
THAT'S THE HEALING...JUST STAY WITH IT NOW...Hmmmm....STAY WITH IT, AND FEEL IT AS LONG AS YOU NEED...WHEN YOU ARE READY TO COME BACK, BRING THE HEALING WITH YOU...AND ALL YOU HAVE TO DO IS JUST TAKE THREE DEEP BREATHS AND LET YOUR EYES OPEN...BUT DON'T COME BACK UNTIL YOU'RE READY...WHEN YOU DO COME BACK JUST COME BACK TO THE SURFACE OF THE DREAM, AND I WILL MEET YOU THERE BECAUSE THERE IS ANOTHER PLACE I'D LIKE TO TAKE YOU.
I feel like a very fuzzy caterpillar...MMM-UHUH....that's eaten a lot...it's so fat and it's soft....hmmmmm. ARE YOU READY TO GO BACK UP TO THE SURFACE OF THE DREAM NOW?...hmmm...Uhuh. THERE'S A PRESENCE IN THAT DREAM...A GUIDE...DO YOU FEEL IT? I'm seeing all of her now...a woman like a fairy with butterfly wings. DO YOU FEEL THEM ON YOUR OWN SHOULDERS?...Yeah, Ok, Ok, uhuh...they're sprouting...irridescent wings!
OK...STAY THERE...those wings, its like the same irridescence as those motesMOTES [spoken simultaneously]. [NOTE: in Greek, PSYCHE means butterfly]
GO JUST A LITTLE BIT DEEPER NOW...AND FEEL THE ENERGY THAT YOU RADIATE...THESE COLORS...Uhuh...what's in my mind is that passing over the clouds over the mountains coming into Medford there is a double circular rainbow around the shadow of the plane...below. The shadow of the plane is in the exact middle always, and I'm sitting right beyond the wing, and I'm looking down and seeing this rainbow...and it's now like I'm in the center of that rainbow...mmmm-huh...two rainbows...I see all these colors over here.
JUST LET THEM ENTER YOU...FEEL THEM...FEEL THE CENTER...I'm the center spot...MAY I TOUCH YOU?...Yeah...[touches heart center].............[long pause]........[eyes open]...WELCOME BACK!
INTEGRATION
Now I'm feeling...oh, I'm feeling like integrating the feeling of the movement of the plane and all those vibrations...and at the same time the rainbows and the shadow of the plane are constant. That's what I'm feeling. I'm feeling like there is a constancy in the movement, you see? UHUH...It can't be but it is...THAT'S A GOOD LESSON, ISN'T IT? Yeah, yeah...yeah....THERE IS WISDOM THERE, YOU'VE TOUCHED SOME WISDOM THERE...Yeah, I'm a very wise person...YOU BET...Oh wow!
THE STRUCTURE IS THE ILLUSION; IT'S THE MOVEMENT THAT IS THE REALITY. THE STRUCTURE OF THE PLANE, THE THINGS WE THINK ARE PERMANENT, THEY ARE THE ILLUSIONS. Yes. FEEDBACK....COMMENTS?
Thank you...I've got my mama's tit again. When I was saying I'm a wise person, I usually can't say that, like its not good to be presumptuous, right. And it's like its OK to be yourself...UHUH, THAT'S A NICE GIFT FROM THE DREAM, TOO.
She recalls her song where she wrote, "Woman trust your body's wisdom..." Graywolf asks her if she has had trouble in her legs. She says "No," but refers to month-old distress on the bottom of her forearms, slight arthritis, etc.
THE TINGLING IN THE BODY, THOUGH, THERE WAS SOMETHING WITH THAT. Oh, [emphatically], the tingling was...SEEMED INTENSE...yes, it was very intense, yea. At the beginning of this session I was asking myself what this is about. And its about coming here. It's about my mother going 50 years ago to Farther South Camp, a forerunner of Outward Bound.
I stayed home on the farm to cook, sweep, and wash for my father and brothers. And my mother went galavantin' off, just like I am now. Only no one has to cook and sweep for me. My kids are grown. Still, though, I was having the image of the woman going off to the wilderness to find herself. THAT'S SOMETHING OF THE ESSENCE OF WHY YOU'RE HERE THEN. Hmmmhuh. And I was hearing this morning a poem that my mother loved, I think by William Blake or John Dunn, someone of the mystical faith. It goes:
Every morning lean thine arms upon the windowsill of heaven; And contemplate thy God. And then with a vision freshen thy heart and go forth into the day.
I am not knowing if I have permission to lean my hands on the windowsill of Heaven. [she rubs her arms where she has complained of the distress]. YOU JUST DID...SO YOU MUST...Like I just did right now...So I do...So I don't need that! [She makes shaking motions as if to let go of that energy].
SO AGAIN, JUST ON THE OTHER SIDE OF FEAR IS THE POWER. JUST ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE FEAR AND THE PAIN. JUST EXPRESSING THE FEAR AND THE PAIN DOES NOTHING MORE THAN HONOR IT...IT DOESN'T TAKE YOU TO THE OTHER SIDE OF IT. ALSO, THERE WAS AN INNOCENCE OF SHADOW IN THIS DREAM. YOU WENT INTO THE SHADOW SIDE IN THE SHARK...aimed at the light...I had a momentary flashback to a time when my husband with Alzheimer's tried to make love to me. It was scary, but I saved myself from that situation. Before that fear of my father that summer my mother went to camp.
I'D LIKE TO SUGGEST THAT YOU EXPERIENCED EVEN ONE LEVEL DEEPER...THIS IS CONJECTURE AT THIS POINT...I THINK YOU EXPERIENCED THE MOMENT OF YOUR CONCEPTION. Hhmmm...the sperm, yes...going into the egg...the motes. I HAD VERY MUCH THE FEELING OF THAT WHILE YOU WERE THERE. Uhuh, uhuh. That thought was the penetration there--that's very interesting--AHA! THAT'S WHERE SOME OF THE INITIAL IMAGES WERE FORMED. SOME OF THE VERY MOST PRIMAL IMAGES THAT SHAPED YOU. Hmmmm.
Graywolf...Now that I just am this ovum being penetrated by the sperm, I'm no longer violated...how about that! I'm created, I'm not violated! THAT'S A BIG CHANGE IN IMAGE, ISN'T IT. Uhuh, tremendous! Tremendous, tremendous. ITS A VERY FUNDAMENTAL CHANGE IN YOURSELF IN TERMS OF WHO YOU ARE NOW. I feel like Jesus when they pierced him in the side...aha, aha, aha. That tingling...now its in my back and it's in my arms.
I was still resisting until now that sperm penetrating, and until it did, I couldn't be whole. Now I'm feeling like I'm in the Fallopian tube, and going into the uterus, and I can implant, and grow to where I am now. Its a wonderful feeling, because I can be inside my mother and here at the same time. I can be in all of those places. It's wonderful!
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Plenum - Cosmic Unity Experience
COSMIC UNITY EXPERIENCE
Cosmic Unity Experience
(In this induction, a brief pause follows each paragraph. Longer pauses are marked. A half-hour pause follows the end of the induction proper, before the section marked return.)
Put your hands in mine. Just lay them in mine.
Gradually now, as you feel my hand and my hands feel yours, let the wall of skin that separates us dissolved and disappear.
Gradually feel how your blood vessels and mine connect, so that your blood runs through my veins and my blood runs through yours and the bloods mingle and we have one blood.
We become a unity. We become one.
Gradually feel how my thoughts become yours, and yours become mine. Gradually feel how your emotions become mine and my emotions become yours. They mix. They mingle. They become one. We become a unity. We become one. We are a unity. We are one.
(pause)
Because we're a unity, because we're one, we can extend. We can become everything in this room. We are a unity. We are one.
(pause)
Because we're a unity, because we're one, we can expand outward and become all of humanity.
The guy in a service station servicing cars, the drivers of the cars, a working person in a factory.
A soldier shooting and being shot. We lie close to the earth firing where movement seems to happen in the thick brush. Suddenly we feel some pain and notice a darkening and reddening around a hole in our jacket.
We are a criminal moving stealthily down back alleys on the way to a robbery. We are the person who is robbed.
We are a child let out from school greeting the late afternoon freedom with a shout of exultation.
We are a mother calling her child from an open doorway. We are the child answering the call.
We are an old man dying. Our breathing comes hard and rattles in our lungs. The eyes glaze over.
We are an infant, newly born. Our eyes see light and dark. Our skin gets strange sensations. We cry, not knowing that we cry.
We are lovers making love. We feel hand son our bodies, the taste of someone's mouth. We feel ourselves enter and be entered.
We are a mother giving birth. We feel the downward straining of the muscles and writhe with it. We are the child being born. We feel the pressure of the rhythmic opening and closing.
We are a hunter in the jungle. We feel the heat and smell the swat as we wait in cover for the quarry to appear.
We are a mother suckling a child. We feel its mouth on our nipple, the hands clutching the breast, the spurt of milk. We are also the child, sucking mouth filled with nipple and milk.
In the frozen North, we sit in a snow hut chewing on sealskin. We feel the pressure on our jaws. The fire smokes and our eyes tear.
We are an executive in a corporation looking bored at the papers on our desk. We are a tennis player leaping to return a shot before the ball goes by. We feel the leap in our back and arms and haunches and legs as we strike the ball.
We are actors, concert-goers, sailors, farmers, prostitutes and pimps. We are judges, students, demonstrators, politicians and pimps. We are judges, students, demonstrators, politicians. We are all of humanity. Because we're a unity. Because we're one.
(pause)
Because we're a unity, because we're one, we can expand still further and become all of animal life.
We are a dog whining at the door as we hear a familiar ear outside. We hear the foot steps get louder and when the door opens we leap upward in ecstasy.
We are a cat stretched out on a sofa watching nothingness with yellow eyes. Suddenly we leap down and go to the food dish.
We are birds building nests, singing to stake out our space.
We are a mouse hiding behind a log. Suddenly we see others running and we, too run, not knowing why.
We are bears scratching our backs against the trees.
We are al epoard hiding in a tree, waiting. Suddenly an antelope passes and we leap down, biting into the throat and being borne to the earth. We are the antelope. We can feel the jump, the teeth, the blood, and the pain in the throat.
We are partridges making love. We drum our wings. We mount and are mounted.
We are baby foxes barking and biting at one another in a hidden valley. Suddenly our mother barks and we rush into the den and huddle quietly. Shortly afterward we hear the crackling of twigs.
We are a fly sucking at the huge granuled sweetness of a sugar cube. Deep in the water, we're fish swimming along, nibbling at the water weeds. We're an eagle perched on a mountain top. We're all of animal life. Because we're a unity. Because we are one.
(pause)
Because we're a unity, because we're one, we can expand and become all of plant life.
We can feel our roots going deep, deep, deep into the earth.
We can feel our leaves warm in the sunlight, and the rain falling down on them before it goes into the earth. Our roots take in the water and it rises under the bark.
There are thousands of us and we spread across the fields. Horses come and crop at us. We're the grass. We're the horses also.
We gradually open our flowers and the smell brings bees to take our nectar and bring pollen. We're roses -- and we are bees.
We grow at the bottom of ponds waving in the water. We lie at the top of ponds, and the surface becomes green and slimy.
We twine around fences and other plants. We're vines.
Deep in the jungle, we grow on other plants. We have no roots. We're orchids.
We're lichens and mosses. We turn the rocks green and weave them into earth.
We're white, brown, red, yellow, all colors. We carry our seed cases under fleshy heads on our stalks. Sometimes we grow alone, sometimes in clusters, turning decay to life. We're mushrooms.
We're everything--all of plant life. Because we're a unity. Because we're one.
(pause)
Because we're a unity, because we're one, we can expand further and become all the land.
We feel plows cutting us up into fields. We're the plows, too.
We can feel the roots of plants penetrating us. We're the plants, too.
In holes deep within us, rivers move, bats fly, and men may dig.
We rise in tall, great masses. Great pine forests ring us. Rivers tear at us. Snow rests always cold at our tops. We are mountains.
At our margins, the waves tear at us. We drop beneath the water and we are the cup that holds the sea.
Because we're a unity. Because we're one.
(pause)
Because we're a unity, because we're one, we can expand further and become all the water.
The rain falling warm and gentle from the clouds in the spring, or cold and hard as an autumn gale whips the trees and houses.
We are a small pond with algae floating green in the hot sun. We are a large lake where people sit fishing. We are also the fish and the people.
We are a mountain stream cold and swollen with the rain, showing white as we strike against the rocks in our bed and washing away the earth in our banks. We turn brown at our edges with the earth.
And sometimes when it is cold we get hard and solid, or turn into a fine white powder. We are the ice and snow.
We gather together in large masses, endlessly moving. We are the sea. We crash upon the land in huge breakers and wash it away. Great ships ride upon us. In our depths, fish swim. We roll over plains, mountains, buried cities. We are the ocean.
Because we're a unity. Because we're one.
(pause)
And because we're a unity, because we're one, we can expand further and become the air.
Great tides of air moving, moving, moving over the earth.
Sometimes we move gently, like the light breeze that touches a young girl's cheek. We're the young girl, too.
Sometimes we move lightly and billow out the wash on a sunlit day.
Sometimes we are hurricanes. We knock down trees. We know down houses. Nothing can stand against us.
Sometimes we are unmoving. The clouds just stand in white gray masses in the heavy air.
Because we're a unity. Because we're one.
(pause)
And because we're a unity, because we're one, we expand still further and become the entire earth moving through space around another world that gives forth light and hear.
Near us there's another world moving around us, and still other world. From far off in the blackness, other worlds mark small places of light. Because we're a unity. Because we're one.
(pause)
And because we're a unity, because we're one, we can expand still further and become the entire solar system.
A network of planets, comets, asteroids, moving around a central sun, the whole part of a larger net and moving together through space, moving, moving, moving, endlessly moving.
And we whirl around our own center without purpose, but with direction, moving through space endlessly, endlessly, endlessly...moving, moving, moving.
Because we're a unity. Because we're one.
(pause)
Because we're a unity, because we're one, we can expand further and become the entire galaxy.
Solar systems, star systems revolving around one another, large stars, small stars, some bright some black. All turning around a common center and moving in a body through space.
Moving, moving, endlessly moving with direction, but without purpose. Always moving, moving, endlessly moving.
Because we're a unity. Because we're one.
(pause)
Because we're a unity, because we're one, we can expand further and further and become the whole collection of galaxies and island universes.
Our limits are beyond all limits.
We are the distance between the stars.
We are huge cloud clusters of stars moving, revolving, endlessly.
We are light and no light, all colors and no color, all shapes in their stasis and their change, moving, moving, moving, because we're a unity, because we're one.
(pause)
And because we're a unity, because we're one, we become the whole universe. We become a single point around which the universe, which is us, revolves.
Just as a spinning top has a point of stillness around which it revolves, so are we the point of stillness for the universe.
Around us all is motion and music in visual display. We are the center, we are in the center participating in our stillness in its motion. For all is us and we are all.
We are a unity. We are one.
(long pause)
*
[Return:]
Now, gradually, because we're a unity, because we're one, we expand outward again and become the whole universe. Our boundaries are beyond time and limitless.
Because we're a unity, because we're one, we become our own galaxy moving through space among other galaxies.
And because we're a unity, because we're one, we shrink and become our solar system moving through the galaxy.
And because we're a unity, because we're one, we shrink to become our own planet, moving with other planets around a distant star.
And because we're a unity, because we're one we shrink and become the air enveloping the earth.
And because we're a unity, because we're one, we shrink and become the waters.
And because we're a unity, because we're one, we become the land, the mountains and valleys, the hard soil and the sod.
And because we're a unity, because we're one, we become all plant life, the trees and flowers and grass.
And because we're a unity, because we're one, we become all animal life--the squirrels and doves, the monkeys, the lions, the giraffes, the calves, the partridges.
And because we're a unity, because we're one, we become all of humanity, all colors, all races, all people, all sexes, all religions.
And because we're a unity, because we're one, we contract to being everything in this room.
And because we're a unity, because we're one, we contract and become ourselves again, sitting in the room linked together.
Now, gradually let our blood vessels separate, so that we each have our separate blood supply.
Now, gradually let the skin form between us so that we can separate ourselves and go back to being ourselves.
Keeping from this experience whatever you need, being already in the here and now, return to the here and now and wake up whenever you're ready.
*
Cosmic Unity Experience
(In this induction, a brief pause follows each paragraph. Longer pauses are marked. A half-hour pause follows the end of the induction proper, before the section marked return.)
Put your hands in mine. Just lay them in mine.
Gradually now, as you feel my hand and my hands feel yours, let the wall of skin that separates us dissolved and disappear.
Gradually feel how your blood vessels and mine connect, so that your blood runs through my veins and my blood runs through yours and the bloods mingle and we have one blood.
We become a unity. We become one.
Gradually feel how my thoughts become yours, and yours become mine. Gradually feel how your emotions become mine and my emotions become yours. They mix. They mingle. They become one. We become a unity. We become one. We are a unity. We are one.
(pause)
Because we're a unity, because we're one, we can extend. We can become everything in this room. We are a unity. We are one.
(pause)
Because we're a unity, because we're one, we can expand outward and become all of humanity.
The guy in a service station servicing cars, the drivers of the cars, a working person in a factory.
A soldier shooting and being shot. We lie close to the earth firing where movement seems to happen in the thick brush. Suddenly we feel some pain and notice a darkening and reddening around a hole in our jacket.
We are a criminal moving stealthily down back alleys on the way to a robbery. We are the person who is robbed.
We are a child let out from school greeting the late afternoon freedom with a shout of exultation.
We are a mother calling her child from an open doorway. We are the child answering the call.
We are an old man dying. Our breathing comes hard and rattles in our lungs. The eyes glaze over.
We are an infant, newly born. Our eyes see light and dark. Our skin gets strange sensations. We cry, not knowing that we cry.
We are lovers making love. We feel hand son our bodies, the taste of someone's mouth. We feel ourselves enter and be entered.
We are a mother giving birth. We feel the downward straining of the muscles and writhe with it. We are the child being born. We feel the pressure of the rhythmic opening and closing.
We are a hunter in the jungle. We feel the heat and smell the swat as we wait in cover for the quarry to appear.
We are a mother suckling a child. We feel its mouth on our nipple, the hands clutching the breast, the spurt of milk. We are also the child, sucking mouth filled with nipple and milk.
In the frozen North, we sit in a snow hut chewing on sealskin. We feel the pressure on our jaws. The fire smokes and our eyes tear.
We are an executive in a corporation looking bored at the papers on our desk. We are a tennis player leaping to return a shot before the ball goes by. We feel the leap in our back and arms and haunches and legs as we strike the ball.
We are actors, concert-goers, sailors, farmers, prostitutes and pimps. We are judges, students, demonstrators, politicians and pimps. We are judges, students, demonstrators, politicians. We are all of humanity. Because we're a unity. Because we're one.
(pause)
Because we're a unity, because we're one, we can expand still further and become all of animal life.
We are a dog whining at the door as we hear a familiar ear outside. We hear the foot steps get louder and when the door opens we leap upward in ecstasy.
We are a cat stretched out on a sofa watching nothingness with yellow eyes. Suddenly we leap down and go to the food dish.
We are birds building nests, singing to stake out our space.
We are a mouse hiding behind a log. Suddenly we see others running and we, too run, not knowing why.
We are bears scratching our backs against the trees.
We are al epoard hiding in a tree, waiting. Suddenly an antelope passes and we leap down, biting into the throat and being borne to the earth. We are the antelope. We can feel the jump, the teeth, the blood, and the pain in the throat.
We are partridges making love. We drum our wings. We mount and are mounted.
We are baby foxes barking and biting at one another in a hidden valley. Suddenly our mother barks and we rush into the den and huddle quietly. Shortly afterward we hear the crackling of twigs.
We are a fly sucking at the huge granuled sweetness of a sugar cube. Deep in the water, we're fish swimming along, nibbling at the water weeds. We're an eagle perched on a mountain top. We're all of animal life. Because we're a unity. Because we are one.
(pause)
Because we're a unity, because we're one, we can expand and become all of plant life.
We can feel our roots going deep, deep, deep into the earth.
We can feel our leaves warm in the sunlight, and the rain falling down on them before it goes into the earth. Our roots take in the water and it rises under the bark.
There are thousands of us and we spread across the fields. Horses come and crop at us. We're the grass. We're the horses also.
We gradually open our flowers and the smell brings bees to take our nectar and bring pollen. We're roses -- and we are bees.
We grow at the bottom of ponds waving in the water. We lie at the top of ponds, and the surface becomes green and slimy.
We twine around fences and other plants. We're vines.
Deep in the jungle, we grow on other plants. We have no roots. We're orchids.
We're lichens and mosses. We turn the rocks green and weave them into earth.
We're white, brown, red, yellow, all colors. We carry our seed cases under fleshy heads on our stalks. Sometimes we grow alone, sometimes in clusters, turning decay to life. We're mushrooms.
We're everything--all of plant life. Because we're a unity. Because we're one.
(pause)
Because we're a unity, because we're one, we can expand further and become all the land.
We feel plows cutting us up into fields. We're the plows, too.
We can feel the roots of plants penetrating us. We're the plants, too.
In holes deep within us, rivers move, bats fly, and men may dig.
We rise in tall, great masses. Great pine forests ring us. Rivers tear at us. Snow rests always cold at our tops. We are mountains.
At our margins, the waves tear at us. We drop beneath the water and we are the cup that holds the sea.
Because we're a unity. Because we're one.
(pause)
Because we're a unity, because we're one, we can expand further and become all the water.
The rain falling warm and gentle from the clouds in the spring, or cold and hard as an autumn gale whips the trees and houses.
We are a small pond with algae floating green in the hot sun. We are a large lake where people sit fishing. We are also the fish and the people.
We are a mountain stream cold and swollen with the rain, showing white as we strike against the rocks in our bed and washing away the earth in our banks. We turn brown at our edges with the earth.
And sometimes when it is cold we get hard and solid, or turn into a fine white powder. We are the ice and snow.
We gather together in large masses, endlessly moving. We are the sea. We crash upon the land in huge breakers and wash it away. Great ships ride upon us. In our depths, fish swim. We roll over plains, mountains, buried cities. We are the ocean.
Because we're a unity. Because we're one.
(pause)
And because we're a unity, because we're one, we can expand further and become the air.
Great tides of air moving, moving, moving over the earth.
Sometimes we move gently, like the light breeze that touches a young girl's cheek. We're the young girl, too.
Sometimes we move lightly and billow out the wash on a sunlit day.
Sometimes we are hurricanes. We knock down trees. We know down houses. Nothing can stand against us.
Sometimes we are unmoving. The clouds just stand in white gray masses in the heavy air.
Because we're a unity. Because we're one.
(pause)
And because we're a unity, because we're one, we expand still further and become the entire earth moving through space around another world that gives forth light and hear.
Near us there's another world moving around us, and still other world. From far off in the blackness, other worlds mark small places of light. Because we're a unity. Because we're one.
(pause)
And because we're a unity, because we're one, we can expand still further and become the entire solar system.
A network of planets, comets, asteroids, moving around a central sun, the whole part of a larger net and moving together through space, moving, moving, moving, endlessly moving.
And we whirl around our own center without purpose, but with direction, moving through space endlessly, endlessly, endlessly...moving, moving, moving.
Because we're a unity. Because we're one.
(pause)
Because we're a unity, because we're one, we can expand further and become the entire galaxy.
Solar systems, star systems revolving around one another, large stars, small stars, some bright some black. All turning around a common center and moving in a body through space.
Moving, moving, endlessly moving with direction, but without purpose. Always moving, moving, endlessly moving.
Because we're a unity. Because we're one.
(pause)
Because we're a unity, because we're one, we can expand further and further and become the whole collection of galaxies and island universes.
Our limits are beyond all limits.
We are the distance between the stars.
We are huge cloud clusters of stars moving, revolving, endlessly.
We are light and no light, all colors and no color, all shapes in their stasis and their change, moving, moving, moving, because we're a unity, because we're one.
(pause)
And because we're a unity, because we're one, we become the whole universe. We become a single point around which the universe, which is us, revolves.
Just as a spinning top has a point of stillness around which it revolves, so are we the point of stillness for the universe.
Around us all is motion and music in visual display. We are the center, we are in the center participating in our stillness in its motion. For all is us and we are all.
We are a unity. We are one.
(long pause)
*
[Return:]
Now, gradually, because we're a unity, because we're one, we expand outward again and become the whole universe. Our boundaries are beyond time and limitless.
Because we're a unity, because we're one, we become our own galaxy moving through space among other galaxies.
And because we're a unity, because we're one, we shrink and become our solar system moving through the galaxy.
And because we're a unity, because we're one, we shrink to become our own planet, moving with other planets around a distant star.
And because we're a unity, because we're one we shrink and become the air enveloping the earth.
And because we're a unity, because we're one, we shrink and become the waters.
And because we're a unity, because we're one, we become the land, the mountains and valleys, the hard soil and the sod.
And because we're a unity, because we're one, we become all plant life, the trees and flowers and grass.
And because we're a unity, because we're one, we become all animal life--the squirrels and doves, the monkeys, the lions, the giraffes, the calves, the partridges.
And because we're a unity, because we're one, we become all of humanity, all colors, all races, all people, all sexes, all religions.
And because we're a unity, because we're one, we contract to being everything in this room.
And because we're a unity, because we're one, we contract and become ourselves again, sitting in the room linked together.
Now, gradually let our blood vessels separate, so that we each have our separate blood supply.
Now, gradually let the skin form between us so that we can separate ourselves and go back to being ourselves.
Keeping from this experience whatever you need, being already in the here and now, return to the here and now and wake up whenever you're ready.
*
Hypnotic Experience of The Void
Hypnotic Induction of the Void;
Introduction
This script is a long voyage into co-consciousness which is a guided tour to the Void. PART II, Cosmic Unity Experience is on the next page here and concerns the experiential fullness of Nature, as the Plenum.
Tantric love-making automatically induces a condition of suspension of thoughts at the moment of climax -- a momentary experience of what both Hinduism and Buddhism has termed the Void. But conditioning or training in hypnotic induction of the Void can lead to deepening this state and adding to spontaneity.
This script was developed by Bernard S. Aaronson, Ph.D. and presented at the American Society of of Clinical Hypnosis in 1969. It appeared in the Journal of the American Society for Psychosomatic Dentistry and Medicine in 1979 (Vol. 26, No.1).
The void experience, the central experience of Eastern and Western mysticism, was analyzed as a state resulting from a separation of self from one's senses, from one's concept of self, and a loss of opposites and polarities. Suggestions are also given for ego-expansion, an experience of the Plenum.
In the quasi-anatomical mapping of consciousness characteristic of kundalini yoga, the seventh chakra, the center of consciousness located at the top of the head and associated with nirvana, contains the void as a central area. This experience of the void is the core experience of introvertive mysticism. It is an intensely positive experience without empirical content, except a consciousness of consciousness itself -- the ground state of the nature mind, in Tibetan tantra. All mental and physical objects are obliterated from consciousness, the self becomes aware of itself as the bare unity of the manifold of consciousness. It has been called "the Supreme Good. It is One without a second. It is the Self." Suzuki quotes the Great Prajnaparamita Sutra, saying,
"Thus, Sariputra, all things have the character of emptiness, they have no beginning, no end, they are faultless and not faultless, they are not perfect and not imperfect. Therefore I Saiputra, here in this emptiness there is no form, no perception, no name, no concepts, no knowledge. No eye, no ear, no nose, no tongue, no body, no mind. No form, no sound, no smell, no taste, no touch, no objects...There is no knowledge, no ignorance, no destruction of ignorance. ..There is no decay nor death; there are no four truths, viz, there is no pain, no origin of pain, no stoppage of pain.
There is no knowledge of Nirvana, no obtaining of it...When the impediment of consciousness are annihilated, then he becomes free of all fear, is beyond the reach of change, enjoying final Nirvana."
The experience comes with the letting go of the concept of the self as a distinct and separate entity, and breaking down the separation imposed by concepts and logic, and a unifying vision. The conditions included are (1) meditation, (2) ego-loss, (3) loss of opposites, (4) meditation and ego-loss, (5) meditation and loss of opposites, (6) ego-loss and loss of opposites, and (7) the void.
Subjects reported (1) a sense of unity which becomes at its extreme pure awareness without empirical content; (2) transcendence of time and space; (3) deeply felt positive mood; (4) sense of sacredness; (5) a sense of intuitively gained insightful knowledge which is also authoritative; (6) paradoxical or logically contradictory experience; (7) ineffability or inability to express the experience in words; (8) transience of the experience; (9) persistent positive changes in attitude and behavior.
The alternative induction is the experience of cosmic unity, or the Plenum, a letting go into the flow of imagery. Subjects report feelings of joy, peace, spirituality, feeling in closer touch with the world afterward. The fact that spiritual experience can be produced in this fashion opens the possibility for study of the technology of mysticism and the development of an experimental and experiential psychology of spirituality.
The Induction of the Void
(In the following, the end of each paragraph should be followed by a brief pause. The terms, meditation, ego-loss, and loss of opposites are for identification only. Following the induction, a half-hour pause is permitted, after which you can return to normal awareness).
Meditation:
Listen.
Don't try to figure out what you're listening to. Just listen.
Listen the way you would eat, the way you would taste something. Is the food too salty, or not salty enough, or just right? Is it too sweet, or not sweet enough, or just right? Just listen.
Don't try to figure our what you're listening to. Don't even try to figure out what I'm saying to you--your brain will take care of that. Just listen.
Around you is a universe of sound. Just listen.
Sound is only the movement of air at your eardrums. Just listen.
After a while it may get hard to tell if you're listening or you're being listened, or who's listening; to what, or what's listening to whom--or who's listening to whom and what's listening to what. Just listen. Just listen.
(3 minute pause)
While you're listening, notice the pressure of gravity on your body. Feel how it tugs at your feet and your legs and your wrists. Feel how the pressure of gravity pulls at your shoulders and your back and your neck and your head. Feel how it is on your arms and your hands.
Notice how the tug of gravity on one set of muscles reflects itself in the muscles that are associated and connected with that set.
Notice how you aren't aware at all of this at the same time, but that sometimes you are aware of gravity in one part of your body, and sometimes in another, and then your awareness shifts to another part, or perhaps moves back to the first place again. So that it forms an endless cycle, endlessly moving, endlessly changing, always different, yet always recurring as your attention moves over your body.
After a while, it may get hard to tell whether you're pushing down on the chair, or it's pushing up at you.
Just feel the gravity. Just feel it.
(3 minute pause)
And while you're listening, while you're feeling the gravity, notice how your skin feels.
Areas of warmth, and of cold. Perhaps a slight breeze blowing across your skin. Feelings of touch. Maybe a momentary sense of pain. Perhaps some tickle. Maybe some sexual sensation.
This also forms an endless cycle, endlessly moving, endlessly changing, always recurring, but never the same.
And notice how your attention fluctuates over your whole body, so that sometimes you are aware of it in one part and sometimes in another. Don't try to identify with these sensations. Just feel them.
After w while it may get hard to tell if you're feeling them or they're feeling you, or who's feeling whom. Just feel the sensations. Just feel them.
(3 minute pause)
While you're feeling the sensations in your skin, and while you're listening and feeling gravity, notice your breathing.
Notice how some times you breathe deeply, and some times not so deeply. Sometimes you might even stop breathing for a few seconds, then your breathing starts again.
Your breathing, too, is an endless cycle, endlessly changing, endlessly recurring, always different, never the same, but always repeating itself. Don't identify with your breathing. Just breathe.
Breathe in through your nose and out through your mouth.
Imagine that you're inside a large gas bag. When you breathe in, you are filling the gas bag, when you breathe out, you are emptying it.
Don't try to breathe out. Just breathe in and let the air come out by itself.
Imagine that at the back of your throat, there is a stopcock. When you breathe in, the stopcock opens wide. As you breathe out, it gradually closes, until when it's completely closed, you breathe in again and the stopcock opens wide again.
Feel the air as it comes out through your mouth.
Put your lower lip up against your upper teeth, so you can see how the air feels slowing over your lip.
Notice how when the air is in the back of your throat, it seems to form the sound, "ah-h-h-h." When it is in the middle of your mouth, it seems to form the sound "mmmm-m-m-m." So that as you breathe out, the air seems to be going a-u-m...a-u-m...a-u-m...a-u-m...Notice how these sounds cover the whole of your mouth. Say "a-u-n" and hear it.
(chant "a-u-m" for two minutes)
After a while, it may be hard to tell if you're breathing, or if you're being breathed, or who's breathing what, and what's breathing whom. Don't identify with your breathing. Just breathe. Just breathe.
(3 minute pause)
And while you're breathing, and feeling the sensations in your skin, and listening, and feeling gravity, smell.
Notice how sometimes when the air goes through your nostrils you are aware of scents and odors, and at other times you aren't aware of them. This, too, varies constantly and is constantly changing, constantly different, never the same. Don't identify with the scents. Just smell.
Smell the smells that come to you from the world around you, whatever they may be or may not be. After a while it may be hard to tell whether you're smelling, or you're being smelled, or who's smelling what and what's smelling whom.
Don't identify with the smells. Just smell. Just smell.
(3 minute pause)
While you're smelling, listening, feeling, and breathing, notice the thoughts and images that go through your head. Notice how sometimes there is only one thought or only one image, sometimes there are many thoughts and many images, and sometimes are none at all.
These, too, form an endless cycle, endlessly changing, endlessly repeating itself, always different, never the same, yet always recurring. They come and they go, back and forth, in endless procession. One replaces the other, many replace one, one replaces many, or nothing may replace all, or many thoughts and many images may replace a period of nothingness. Don't try to identify with the--let them float through like clouds, don't try to identify them, just have them.
After a while, it may be hard to tell whether you're thinking or you're being taught, and who's thinking what and what's thinking whom and who's thinking whom and what's thinking what. Don't identify with your thoughts. Just watch them. Just watch them.
(3 minute pause)
And while you're thinking, and listening, and smelling, and breathing, and feeling, notice your emotions.
Feelings of joy and feelings of sorrow, feelings of anger and feelings of peace, feelings of tension and feelings of calm, feelings of fear and feelings of courage, and all of the thousands of feelings for which we have no names.
These, too, come and go. They come and they go in an endless cycle, endlessly moving, endlessly changing, always different, never the same, but always recurring.
Don't try to identify them. Don't identify with them. Just have them. After a while it may be hard to tell if you're having them, or they're having you--or who's having what or what's having whom, or what's having what and who's having whom.
Don't try to identify your emotions. Don't identify with your emotions. Just feel your emotions. Just have them. Just have them.
(3 minute pause)
While you're feeling your emotions and watching your thoughts and listening and smelling and breathing and feeling, notice also your drives.
Feelings of hunger, feelings of thirst, sexual needs, perhaps a need to defecate, perhaps feelings of satiation, needs for air. These come and go just as your feelings do, just as your breathing does, just as everything does. Sometimes they're strong and sometimes they're weak. Sometimes they occur separately, sometimes together. Don't try to identify them. Don't identify with them. Just have them. Just have them.
(3 minute pause)
Now open your eyes and look. Look the way you listen, the way you feel or taste or smell or breathe. Just look.
What you are seeing is just the impact of light on the receptors of the retina. Just look.
After a while, it may be hard to tell whether you're looking or you're being looked, or who's looking at whom, or what's looking at what and what's looking at whom. Don't try to identify what you're looking at. Don't identify with what you're looking at. Just look. Just look.
Maybe what you're looking at isn't real. Maybe you and what you're looking at stand to one another as the walls of a cup and what's real is the space between you. Don't identify with it. Just look. Just look.
(3 minute pause)
[Ego Loss:]
And now pay attention to yourself.
Notice how sometimes you concentrate on your body, your physical self, and sometimes on your psychological or mental self, and sometimes on both.
Notice how you don't pay attention to all of you at once, but that sometimes you focus on one part of you, and then on another part, and then on a third part or, perhaps you might move to the first part again.
This, too forms an endless cycle, endlessly changing, always different, never the same, but always recurring. Your experience of yourself, too, shifts as your attention shifts.
Notice that sometime you are supremely aware of yourself, and other time you are not aware you are deepening, you may not be aware of yourself at all. When you like yourself, you are aware of yourself positively, and when you don't like yourself, you may be aware of yourself negatively, and there are all degrees of liking and disliking with which you may think about yourself or about different aspects of your self.
Sometimes in one situation, you'll behave in one way, and sometimes in another situation, you'll behave in another way. These are all part of the self which is always changing, and yet there is a part of the self that watches the self that changes that is ot involved in the change.
You give the self that changes your own name...but there is a self that goes beyond... that watches ... which is greater than ... which is beyond. For the I that perceives is different from the I it looks at. The self that perceives is different from the self it perceives. If the perceiving I contains the I that is perceived, it must be other than and greater than the I that is perceived.
So take off your mask! Take off your mask, the mask of your small self... find out who you really are.
Experience the self which perceives the lesser self, the I that perceives the lesser I. Know -- who you really are. See -- who you really are. Be -- who you really are.
Take off the mask, the mask of (subject's first and last name). Know who you really are. Take off your mask. Take off your mask.
[Loss of opposites]
You are male. You are female. You are both male and female. You are neither male nor female, but both male and female.
You are young. You are old. You are both young and old, but neither young nor old.
Located in time, but timeless. Bounded in space, but boundless.
You have a past and a present, but neither past nor present, but both past and present. You have a past and a future, but neither past nor future, but both past and future. You have a present and future, but neither present nor future, but both present and future.
You have a left and a right, but neither left nor right, but both left and right. You have a front and a back, but neither front nor back, but both front and back. You have a top and a bottom, but neither top nor bottom, but both top and bottom.
Wherever you look, universes appear. When you look away, they cease to be, and yet they never were.
In any face that you look are all faces -- happy and sad, grotesque and beautiful, light and dark. In any face you can see your own face.
You are here, you are there. You are both here and there, but neither here nor there.
Around and through you everything is in motion, yet nothing moves. And still it moves.
For whatever is, is not, and whatever is not, is , and whatever is, is, and whatever is not, is not, at one and the same time.
Whatever is true is true, whatever is false is false. But whatever is true is false and whatever is false is true at one and the same time.
And you are separate from everything else in the universe and you are everything else in the universe. Whatever exists rests in you, whatever does not exist rests in you. You rest in everything that exists, you rest in everything that does not exist. For nothing exists that does not exist and nothing does not exist that exists.
There is no end to you and no beginning, although you have both an end and a beginning.
You are you and you are me and yet you are not you and you are not me. You are anyone else and not anyone else. You are all the objects around you, and you are not any of these objects. The world is your multiplicity, and the world is your unity. You are the multiplicity of the world. You are the unity of the world.
There is north and south, and east and west. Yet there is no north or south. There is no east or west.
All separations do ot exist, although everything is separate. All boundaries have vanished, but everything is bounded.
Know who you really are. Be who you really are. Become who you really are. But there is no being, there is no becoming, there is no knowing. You are the similarity of all opposites and the opposite of all similarities, the center of all boundaries and the boundary of the centers. Know who you are. Be who you are.
(long pause)
*
[Return:]
Now gradually let opposites and polarities reassert themselves. Let the distinctions between is and is not return. Let the distinctions between here and there return. Let the distinctions between boundedness and boundlessness return.
And now it's time for you to return, time to put on your mask again, the mask of your usual identity, the mask of (your name here). But in putting on your mask, you don't have to put on all of the games you played. Some of the games were games that hurt you. When you put on your mask, put on with it only the good games, the games that benefit you. Now that you know who you really are, you don't have to play the games that hurt you.
So put on your mask again. Put on your usual identity. But remember who you really are and what you really are.
Now gradually let your usual relationship to your perceptions and your senses return as much as you want them to.
And now, whenever you're ready, being already in the here and now, whenever you wish, whenever you're ready.
Introduction
This script is a long voyage into co-consciousness which is a guided tour to the Void. PART II, Cosmic Unity Experience is on the next page here and concerns the experiential fullness of Nature, as the Plenum.
Tantric love-making automatically induces a condition of suspension of thoughts at the moment of climax -- a momentary experience of what both Hinduism and Buddhism has termed the Void. But conditioning or training in hypnotic induction of the Void can lead to deepening this state and adding to spontaneity.
This script was developed by Bernard S. Aaronson, Ph.D. and presented at the American Society of of Clinical Hypnosis in 1969. It appeared in the Journal of the American Society for Psychosomatic Dentistry and Medicine in 1979 (Vol. 26, No.1).
The void experience, the central experience of Eastern and Western mysticism, was analyzed as a state resulting from a separation of self from one's senses, from one's concept of self, and a loss of opposites and polarities. Suggestions are also given for ego-expansion, an experience of the Plenum.
In the quasi-anatomical mapping of consciousness characteristic of kundalini yoga, the seventh chakra, the center of consciousness located at the top of the head and associated with nirvana, contains the void as a central area. This experience of the void is the core experience of introvertive mysticism. It is an intensely positive experience without empirical content, except a consciousness of consciousness itself -- the ground state of the nature mind, in Tibetan tantra. All mental and physical objects are obliterated from consciousness, the self becomes aware of itself as the bare unity of the manifold of consciousness. It has been called "the Supreme Good. It is One without a second. It is the Self." Suzuki quotes the Great Prajnaparamita Sutra, saying,
"Thus, Sariputra, all things have the character of emptiness, they have no beginning, no end, they are faultless and not faultless, they are not perfect and not imperfect. Therefore I Saiputra, here in this emptiness there is no form, no perception, no name, no concepts, no knowledge. No eye, no ear, no nose, no tongue, no body, no mind. No form, no sound, no smell, no taste, no touch, no objects...There is no knowledge, no ignorance, no destruction of ignorance. ..There is no decay nor death; there are no four truths, viz, there is no pain, no origin of pain, no stoppage of pain.
There is no knowledge of Nirvana, no obtaining of it...When the impediment of consciousness are annihilated, then he becomes free of all fear, is beyond the reach of change, enjoying final Nirvana."
The experience comes with the letting go of the concept of the self as a distinct and separate entity, and breaking down the separation imposed by concepts and logic, and a unifying vision. The conditions included are (1) meditation, (2) ego-loss, (3) loss of opposites, (4) meditation and ego-loss, (5) meditation and loss of opposites, (6) ego-loss and loss of opposites, and (7) the void.
Subjects reported (1) a sense of unity which becomes at its extreme pure awareness without empirical content; (2) transcendence of time and space; (3) deeply felt positive mood; (4) sense of sacredness; (5) a sense of intuitively gained insightful knowledge which is also authoritative; (6) paradoxical or logically contradictory experience; (7) ineffability or inability to express the experience in words; (8) transience of the experience; (9) persistent positive changes in attitude and behavior.
The alternative induction is the experience of cosmic unity, or the Plenum, a letting go into the flow of imagery. Subjects report feelings of joy, peace, spirituality, feeling in closer touch with the world afterward. The fact that spiritual experience can be produced in this fashion opens the possibility for study of the technology of mysticism and the development of an experimental and experiential psychology of spirituality.
The Induction of the Void
(In the following, the end of each paragraph should be followed by a brief pause. The terms, meditation, ego-loss, and loss of opposites are for identification only. Following the induction, a half-hour pause is permitted, after which you can return to normal awareness).
Meditation:
Listen.
Don't try to figure out what you're listening to. Just listen.
Listen the way you would eat, the way you would taste something. Is the food too salty, or not salty enough, or just right? Is it too sweet, or not sweet enough, or just right? Just listen.
Don't try to figure our what you're listening to. Don't even try to figure out what I'm saying to you--your brain will take care of that. Just listen.
Around you is a universe of sound. Just listen.
Sound is only the movement of air at your eardrums. Just listen.
After a while it may get hard to tell if you're listening or you're being listened, or who's listening; to what, or what's listening to whom--or who's listening to whom and what's listening to what. Just listen. Just listen.
(3 minute pause)
While you're listening, notice the pressure of gravity on your body. Feel how it tugs at your feet and your legs and your wrists. Feel how the pressure of gravity pulls at your shoulders and your back and your neck and your head. Feel how it is on your arms and your hands.
Notice how the tug of gravity on one set of muscles reflects itself in the muscles that are associated and connected with that set.
Notice how you aren't aware at all of this at the same time, but that sometimes you are aware of gravity in one part of your body, and sometimes in another, and then your awareness shifts to another part, or perhaps moves back to the first place again. So that it forms an endless cycle, endlessly moving, endlessly changing, always different, yet always recurring as your attention moves over your body.
After a while, it may get hard to tell whether you're pushing down on the chair, or it's pushing up at you.
Just feel the gravity. Just feel it.
(3 minute pause)
And while you're listening, while you're feeling the gravity, notice how your skin feels.
Areas of warmth, and of cold. Perhaps a slight breeze blowing across your skin. Feelings of touch. Maybe a momentary sense of pain. Perhaps some tickle. Maybe some sexual sensation.
This also forms an endless cycle, endlessly moving, endlessly changing, always recurring, but never the same.
And notice how your attention fluctuates over your whole body, so that sometimes you are aware of it in one part and sometimes in another. Don't try to identify with these sensations. Just feel them.
After w while it may get hard to tell if you're feeling them or they're feeling you, or who's feeling whom. Just feel the sensations. Just feel them.
(3 minute pause)
While you're feeling the sensations in your skin, and while you're listening and feeling gravity, notice your breathing.
Notice how some times you breathe deeply, and some times not so deeply. Sometimes you might even stop breathing for a few seconds, then your breathing starts again.
Your breathing, too, is an endless cycle, endlessly changing, endlessly recurring, always different, never the same, but always repeating itself. Don't identify with your breathing. Just breathe.
Breathe in through your nose and out through your mouth.
Imagine that you're inside a large gas bag. When you breathe in, you are filling the gas bag, when you breathe out, you are emptying it.
Don't try to breathe out. Just breathe in and let the air come out by itself.
Imagine that at the back of your throat, there is a stopcock. When you breathe in, the stopcock opens wide. As you breathe out, it gradually closes, until when it's completely closed, you breathe in again and the stopcock opens wide again.
Feel the air as it comes out through your mouth.
Put your lower lip up against your upper teeth, so you can see how the air feels slowing over your lip.
Notice how when the air is in the back of your throat, it seems to form the sound, "ah-h-h-h." When it is in the middle of your mouth, it seems to form the sound "mmmm-m-m-m." So that as you breathe out, the air seems to be going a-u-m...a-u-m...a-u-m...a-u-m...Notice how these sounds cover the whole of your mouth. Say "a-u-n" and hear it.
(chant "a-u-m" for two minutes)
After a while, it may be hard to tell if you're breathing, or if you're being breathed, or who's breathing what, and what's breathing whom. Don't identify with your breathing. Just breathe. Just breathe.
(3 minute pause)
And while you're breathing, and feeling the sensations in your skin, and listening, and feeling gravity, smell.
Notice how sometimes when the air goes through your nostrils you are aware of scents and odors, and at other times you aren't aware of them. This, too, varies constantly and is constantly changing, constantly different, never the same. Don't identify with the scents. Just smell.
Smell the smells that come to you from the world around you, whatever they may be or may not be. After a while it may be hard to tell whether you're smelling, or you're being smelled, or who's smelling what and what's smelling whom.
Don't identify with the smells. Just smell. Just smell.
(3 minute pause)
While you're smelling, listening, feeling, and breathing, notice the thoughts and images that go through your head. Notice how sometimes there is only one thought or only one image, sometimes there are many thoughts and many images, and sometimes are none at all.
These, too, form an endless cycle, endlessly changing, endlessly repeating itself, always different, never the same, yet always recurring. They come and they go, back and forth, in endless procession. One replaces the other, many replace one, one replaces many, or nothing may replace all, or many thoughts and many images may replace a period of nothingness. Don't try to identify with the--let them float through like clouds, don't try to identify them, just have them.
After a while, it may be hard to tell whether you're thinking or you're being taught, and who's thinking what and what's thinking whom and who's thinking whom and what's thinking what. Don't identify with your thoughts. Just watch them. Just watch them.
(3 minute pause)
And while you're thinking, and listening, and smelling, and breathing, and feeling, notice your emotions.
Feelings of joy and feelings of sorrow, feelings of anger and feelings of peace, feelings of tension and feelings of calm, feelings of fear and feelings of courage, and all of the thousands of feelings for which we have no names.
These, too, come and go. They come and they go in an endless cycle, endlessly moving, endlessly changing, always different, never the same, but always recurring.
Don't try to identify them. Don't identify with them. Just have them. After a while it may be hard to tell if you're having them, or they're having you--or who's having what or what's having whom, or what's having what and who's having whom.
Don't try to identify your emotions. Don't identify with your emotions. Just feel your emotions. Just have them. Just have them.
(3 minute pause)
While you're feeling your emotions and watching your thoughts and listening and smelling and breathing and feeling, notice also your drives.
Feelings of hunger, feelings of thirst, sexual needs, perhaps a need to defecate, perhaps feelings of satiation, needs for air. These come and go just as your feelings do, just as your breathing does, just as everything does. Sometimes they're strong and sometimes they're weak. Sometimes they occur separately, sometimes together. Don't try to identify them. Don't identify with them. Just have them. Just have them.
(3 minute pause)
Now open your eyes and look. Look the way you listen, the way you feel or taste or smell or breathe. Just look.
What you are seeing is just the impact of light on the receptors of the retina. Just look.
After a while, it may be hard to tell whether you're looking or you're being looked, or who's looking at whom, or what's looking at what and what's looking at whom. Don't try to identify what you're looking at. Don't identify with what you're looking at. Just look. Just look.
Maybe what you're looking at isn't real. Maybe you and what you're looking at stand to one another as the walls of a cup and what's real is the space between you. Don't identify with it. Just look. Just look.
(3 minute pause)
[Ego Loss:]
And now pay attention to yourself.
Notice how sometimes you concentrate on your body, your physical self, and sometimes on your psychological or mental self, and sometimes on both.
Notice how you don't pay attention to all of you at once, but that sometimes you focus on one part of you, and then on another part, and then on a third part or, perhaps you might move to the first part again.
This, too forms an endless cycle, endlessly changing, always different, never the same, but always recurring. Your experience of yourself, too, shifts as your attention shifts.
Notice that sometime you are supremely aware of yourself, and other time you are not aware you are deepening, you may not be aware of yourself at all. When you like yourself, you are aware of yourself positively, and when you don't like yourself, you may be aware of yourself negatively, and there are all degrees of liking and disliking with which you may think about yourself or about different aspects of your self.
Sometimes in one situation, you'll behave in one way, and sometimes in another situation, you'll behave in another way. These are all part of the self which is always changing, and yet there is a part of the self that watches the self that changes that is ot involved in the change.
You give the self that changes your own name...but there is a self that goes beyond... that watches ... which is greater than ... which is beyond. For the I that perceives is different from the I it looks at. The self that perceives is different from the self it perceives. If the perceiving I contains the I that is perceived, it must be other than and greater than the I that is perceived.
So take off your mask! Take off your mask, the mask of your small self... find out who you really are.
Experience the self which perceives the lesser self, the I that perceives the lesser I. Know -- who you really are. See -- who you really are. Be -- who you really are.
Take off the mask, the mask of (subject's first and last name). Know who you really are. Take off your mask. Take off your mask.
[Loss of opposites]
You are male. You are female. You are both male and female. You are neither male nor female, but both male and female.
You are young. You are old. You are both young and old, but neither young nor old.
Located in time, but timeless. Bounded in space, but boundless.
You have a past and a present, but neither past nor present, but both past and present. You have a past and a future, but neither past nor future, but both past and future. You have a present and future, but neither present nor future, but both present and future.
You have a left and a right, but neither left nor right, but both left and right. You have a front and a back, but neither front nor back, but both front and back. You have a top and a bottom, but neither top nor bottom, but both top and bottom.
Wherever you look, universes appear. When you look away, they cease to be, and yet they never were.
In any face that you look are all faces -- happy and sad, grotesque and beautiful, light and dark. In any face you can see your own face.
You are here, you are there. You are both here and there, but neither here nor there.
Around and through you everything is in motion, yet nothing moves. And still it moves.
For whatever is, is not, and whatever is not, is , and whatever is, is, and whatever is not, is not, at one and the same time.
Whatever is true is true, whatever is false is false. But whatever is true is false and whatever is false is true at one and the same time.
And you are separate from everything else in the universe and you are everything else in the universe. Whatever exists rests in you, whatever does not exist rests in you. You rest in everything that exists, you rest in everything that does not exist. For nothing exists that does not exist and nothing does not exist that exists.
There is no end to you and no beginning, although you have both an end and a beginning.
You are you and you are me and yet you are not you and you are not me. You are anyone else and not anyone else. You are all the objects around you, and you are not any of these objects. The world is your multiplicity, and the world is your unity. You are the multiplicity of the world. You are the unity of the world.
There is north and south, and east and west. Yet there is no north or south. There is no east or west.
All separations do ot exist, although everything is separate. All boundaries have vanished, but everything is bounded.
Know who you really are. Be who you really are. Become who you really are. But there is no being, there is no becoming, there is no knowing. You are the similarity of all opposites and the opposite of all similarities, the center of all boundaries and the boundary of the centers. Know who you are. Be who you are.
(long pause)
*
[Return:]
Now gradually let opposites and polarities reassert themselves. Let the distinctions between is and is not return. Let the distinctions between here and there return. Let the distinctions between boundedness and boundlessness return.
And now it's time for you to return, time to put on your mask again, the mask of your usual identity, the mask of (your name here). But in putting on your mask, you don't have to put on all of the games you played. Some of the games were games that hurt you. When you put on your mask, put on with it only the good games, the games that benefit you. Now that you know who you really are, you don't have to play the games that hurt you.
So put on your mask again. Put on your usual identity. But remember who you really are and what you really are.
Now gradually let your usual relationship to your perceptions and your senses return as much as you want them to.
And now, whenever you're ready, being already in the here and now, whenever you wish, whenever you're ready.