Day 3 – The hardest thing in the world! An encounter.

Day three, rolled out of bed at 6:35, completed Pranayama, rolled back into bed and went straight back to sleeep! Nice. It’s becoming automatic!

Woke at 10 am to brilliant blue skies, praises to the God and Goddesses! Read up about Dharana – concentration, gorging in the splendid sunshine. Felt like I had discovered a missing piece of the yogic puzzle, refreshing my sitting practice.

Memories of my previous concentration practice came flooding back. My concentration object – a beautiful stone which my daughter gave to me, a fortuitous discovery from a Welsh beach. Oh the hours spent concentrating on this stone! I know its every detail so intimately you could not imagine. Yet somehow it has slipped from my mind recently. I guess the power of my last mystical experience was such a transforming episode and took such assimilation that it has taken nearly four years to get back into the samadhic saddle to make my next assault on the spiritual mountain peaks.

I feel energised today! I felt a little down last night because I chose to say no to various invitations from friends. This feels more important to me at the moment, to ground myself thoroughly in my practice, to create a strong foundation. I’m sure my friends will understand, yet I cannot help feel bad as I am usually a good friend and know the importance of supporting ones friends when they need it. I feel it is the highest privilege to be able to help a friend in need and normally I am unconditionally giving of my time.

Lately I have felt let down by several friends when we have arranged to do something. It felt very frustrating. One of my beliefs is that if you say you are going to do something with a friend you should do it, and if for some reason you really cannot do what you agreed, then you should make it a priority to let your friend know as soon as possible. To me that’s just common decency. I may be being a bit harsh but I am tired of certain so-called friends continually letting me down and so have decided to cut some individuals out.

Any way enough of the rant, let me tell you about my practise. My asana is going nicely, I practice roughly an hour before noon for about an hour. I will post a list of the sequence. Gradual strengthening is already being felt. Coupled with the pranayama it is a very powerful fitness routine. The bellows breath is the best abdominal exercise I have come across. It takes some getting used to but when the flow kicks in it feels magical. My right leg is still a bit sore from my biking fall but today I managed the lotus whilst performing the mountain. So it’s gradually healing. My new problem is my elbow. It got cut up real bad in the fall and was healing well until I did the scorpion on it and now its gone into a very painful blister. I just hope it’s not infected. I have had to cut out the scorpion for now until it heals again.

So why is simply sitting on the ground with your eyes closed the hardest thing in the world? By God its difficult! Don’t believe me? You should try it. It is sooooo hard!

In the past I have always practised meditation lying down and have had amazing results but now I have decided to master sitting asan. The goal is to be able to sit for 3 hours. I have managed 25 mins so far. Today after my Pranayama I went into yoni mudra, a sense withdrawal exercise in which you close all the senses and concentrate on ajna. This feels good. Next I went into concentration on my stone. This was the first time I’ve done it for ages so was a tad tricky. I then went into a Qi-gong exercise called the microcosmic orbit this is not strictly yoga but I feel it helps to speed up the energetic process considerably and have had excellent results with it in the past. In fact I would go as far as to say that it is the most powerful spiritual/energy exercise I have encountered. It is amazing! Let me tell you about my experiences with it.

Firstly it took weeks to get any results. I practised it a lot. I mean a lot. The process is to visualise a small ball of energy, about half an inch inside your skin, moving from the anus up the back, around the head, down the face to the throat as you breathe in. Then move the energy down from the throat chakra back to the anus as you exhale. This completes one circuit. Mantak Chia suggests starting with nine circuits. Later you can train the circuit to spin continually, unconsciously.

At first you may have trouble visualising this process and so to help you can trace a line around yourself with a finger as you breathe. I found yogic concentration exercises to work  great in combination with the microcosmic orbit as they both help your visualisation skills to develop.

So anyway, after several weeks I started to actually feel the energy rather than just visualising it.  It’s as if the circuit is already there but you need to activate it by first visualising this cosmic loop. It first feels like a weak current moving around your body. After more practice the current gets stronger. I actually started to see it with my inner vision as a light blue electricity looking light moving around a channel which was gradually getting thicker with time. This probably sounds far-fetched to someone who never practised any energy work, but if you have felt these astral energies, you will understand.

This  microcosmic orbit for me was the first piece of a combination of techniques that I started putting together which led to a huge breakthrough. The barefoot doctor tells of a shamanistic exercise called scooping the loop in which the microcosmic orbit is utilised in conjunction with visualising three chakras breathing in unison but separately. This takes a lot of skill. visualising one chakra can be a challenge, to hold three at once whilst spinning the microcosmic orbit around it all takes a lot of practise. It is worth it. The chakras start to come alive. After much practise I then added the Dharana exercise of visualising my stone outside of the orbit whilst breathing the three chakras. This is an incredibly powerful technique.

It takes a lot of energy and time to build up.

One day, about 8 years ago, after deeply feeling the inherent power I was determined to master this technique. It was a sunny day and I spent a full 8 hours lay in Whitworth park continually practising this formidably complex visualisation. I had been abstaining from ejaculating for about a month to build up the required energy levels. I was holding the visualisation strongly, for a long time, but without  major breakthrough.

I went home and decided to give it one more try. I lay on the bed and restarted the technique, after a short time suddenly I was struck by lightning! BOOOM! I  left.

I was transported to what appeared to be the depths of space.

I seemed to be stood on a floating rock in front of a gigantic field of energy. This wasn’t a visualisation or a hallucination I was actually there. Though the experience was somehow more real than our usual reality.

I could physically feel the pulsating energy’s heat combined with some sort of solar wind on my skin. The heat was immense. I was extremely terrified. I thought I was going to catch on fire as the heat was so strong. I suddenly realised how people spontaneously and mysteriously combust.

I felt I was too near to the huge light. The light itself, when I say huge, probably the biggest thing we can imagine is our earth or sun, a planetary scale. This Energy/ Light was hundreds of times the size of our sun. It was staggeringly colossal! Imagine the heat of being right close to our sun but it was a different type of heat, more electrical, of a cool blue colour but still Hot. I sensed it was sentient and it was sensing me.

As quickly as I was there, I was back on the bed.

This was my first mystical experience.

Wow!

I didn’t want another.

I was in shock. Serious shock.

I tried to explain what had occurred to my then girlfriend, and later some of my friends. She later put it down to me opening my kundalini. I guess this was the outer edges of her model. How could anyone realise the power of that experience unless they had under gone a similar occurrence.

This was not Kundalini.

Before this happened to me, if someone would have tried to explain this as happening to them I would probably thought they were crazy or exaggerating. After this experience I didn’t practice any yoga or energy work for over a year. I was petrified!

After a lot of assimilation to my new model of the universe, I began again. It was not to be my last encounter with this incredible light.

23-09-2010	Deep abdominal breath	Inhalation/Exhalation Extension	Easy breath	Bhastrika	Total sit time
6:00 am	X7	20/20 15/15 12/12	5in 5h 10ex x3 5–10–10×4	30 30 30 30 30	5 min
12 noon	X7	15/15×2 17/17×2	5- 10-10 x7	40 20 30 30 30	13 min
6:00 pm	X7	17/17×2 15/15×2	5-10-10×7	25 30 30 35	13 min
12 mid	X9	17/17×5	5-10-10×7	30 30 30 30 30	18 min
24-09-10
6:00 am	X10	20/20 20/17 17/17×3	5-10-10×7	35 35 30 30	20 min
12 noon	X12	25/25 30/30 25/25 20/30 25/25	5-10-10×7	35 40 30 30	25 min
6:00 pm	X20	25/25 20/20 35/35 30/30 25/25	5-20-10×7	30 35 30 25	22 min
12 mid	X20	30/30 40/20 25/25 20/20 20/20	5-10-10×7	40 35 30 30	21 min
25-09-10
6 am	X20	40/45 30/30 25/25 20/20 20/20	5-15-10×8	40 35 30	22 min
12 noon	x25	45/45 35/35 30/30 25/25 20/20 20/20	5-10-10×8	60 30 30	22min
6 pm
12 mid

Pranayama times table