The New Paradigm

  Part I – The Model of the Circulation of Energy 

Ages after the revelation regarding the Original Way of Being appeared and was forgot, I find synchronicities again in my desperate ramblings for the perfect, the true practice. The classic breathing meditation surfaces once more, in different formats again, in a way that allures me. I discover the works of J. J. Semple: a Kundalini awakening in one hundred days! I am naturally interested, especially as he maintains this claim over the details, extending the time period to not more than a year to achieve the actual beginning of awakening.

The model of how the process works involves circulating energy in the microcosmic orbit—a framework that crops up again and again in the Indian Yoga systems of Anapanasati, the Taoist sex practices, and now again in the ancient text of the Secret of the Golden Flower, which forms the basis of the method that Semple discovered through his own success (he simply deciphered the text).

In a greater perspective, I realized that if this was indeed another sign, then there is a specific message being flashed: this is the way, this is the way. The same method cropping up again and again in all these different ways somewhat pointed towards the idea underlining the spectacle. Moreover, the 100 days claim touched an important psychological lever on me, perhaps by the length of time, perhaps it made the method seem all the more reliable and effective. In any case I recognized that this subtle prod coming together with the same method that had been pushed towards me since the past year or so had to have some deeper meaning.

I did not what to waste my efforts; even more, I did not need the experience and the neural memory of simply dropping out of another commitment due to the lack of a single clue about what I was doing. The reason I decided to start the breathing meditation was the clue I finally got regarding the message overhead these visible signs.

I started the practice seeking to integrate both the paradigms that came, either one or the other, with the variations of the practice that I had come across. I would focus on the entire passage of my breathing, going right down into the belly, while seeking to observe only the present reality in hopes of forcing out the alternate state of consciousness which I now know is also designated as Rigpa: silence, presence, peace, beauty, joy. Within a week or so I stopped trying the more far-fetched instructions that I found only with Semple. These included breathing in rhythms and focusing the eyes at the tip of the nose. It was easy to let these go, not only because they seemed very unnatural but also because they did not resonate well; I was intent on doing nothing beyond the necessary, having wasted precious years on the unnecessary.

The conviction and faith I had in the signs allowed me to observe something sacred every night. The beauty of setting aside any hint of the languid spirit, of observing something simple as a sacred ritual, of observing in motion the most ineffable thing called true commitment. Very soon I began to feel the oddest sensation while meditation. That feeling can only be described as the idea that one is doing what one is supposed to be doing; what one is doing that which holds the most decisive gravity at this point in Time. Yes, it was this very complex idea transcribed immaculately into emotion. For an unemotional blob like me, experiencing such a pure and unmistakable feeling was a beautiful, wondrous thing; it was miracle to feel such intimacy, to feel the most direct murmur from the soul. So I had begun my first step, my real communion.

Part II – Karma Yoga and the Primary Spiritual Practice

The other side of this new connection got ample place to reveal itself after my set routine was shattered when I finished my A-levels. As of now I’m treading the same ground; I do not know how this will play out in the end.

Part one is something that I hadn’t put down in writing until now, but I had no trouble writing it. But my journal is full of confused ramblings about this, what I’m going through. That goes to show how unsettling these current proceedings are.  I do not know how to go about organizing this part. As often happens with me these days, I forgot the line of thought that was beginning to come together with aims of best presenting this. The way I have put this ongoing experience in my notebook seems hardly the best way to express it, but still I cannot in hopes of perfecting the expression of the main theme cut myself out. For this is what I hold most precious in my life.

There is a heavy weight lodged onto those words where I referred to myself as an emotionless blob. The instinct and the archetypal journey for growth is such an immense and explosive paradigm; from one dimension I can in fact see being emotionless as the focal point around which it all revolves for me. There was the knowing, despite myself being all but heartless (that realization came later), that there is more to emotions than what words have expressed. The original magnitude of meaning that was supposedly packed in words like Triumph and Ecstasy was something a lot of people never understand. So we had poets who in their own worlds and with their own intentions used these words a lot, words that have so much in them, and these people took it all out of them and began using them for commonplace things, feelings that hardly exist.

That understanding is something that is taking a hand in what I want to grow to be in life. I want to be somebody who wakes people out into these untapped intensities, not to mention myself being in a position where I can always experience them myself. And putting aside all the numerological crap that always exalts to the fullest possible extent any potential an individual may have, in my most sober fantasy I want to be a speaker.

In my notebook I write, about this topic, “regardless of the limiting and disadvantageous temperaments and aspects of the individual, the waves lead him on to those experiences that he needs in order to grow”. And the mention about limiting and disadvantageous temperaments of the individual found their way there only because that is the greatest factor in my own process. The greatest factor. And there lies the crux. That marks quite predictably the most vehement struggle I have ever gone through and, I believe, will ever go through. The aims that inexorably start to appear on the horizon, as the incomprehensible laws of incidence would have it, stands facing that great big wall of my social ineptitude. About that pit of mire, suffice to say that it always took the greater part of my life under its influence, in shaping events and coloring experiences; and as a perfect statement of fact that precedes the introduction of the bombastic dynamics of the growth archetypes in my life, that is the single reason which started me out on this journey.

That is the motion that is to be completed as events of growth. The dream is to penetrate this thick mush of unconsciousness and the regular deaths and that process comes to constitute what stuff growth is. The Primary Spiritual Practice comes into play in letting the forces that are to penetrate the mush come into existence. Aside from the outward events that arrange themselves for the coming change, there grows within the self a new consciousness that, transparent and unfelt, pushes us from beyond our thoughts and feelings towards the perfect step. It is not under anyone’s ability to state which occurs first and whether if one causes the other. The metaphysical proclamation from antiquity comes to mind: All is one.

The invisible presence that shapes our direction is undeniable. We experience all these wonderful things in meditation, and go about our days with a sense of purpose and righteousness, day gone day, day gone day, and the feeling grows to some new activity, to a new idea. The interaction is beginning in one’s outward life. It is a baby that is conceived and growing in the giant womb of eventuality. In poetic pondering the force above such days and such an individual seems electric. Yet it only becomes apparent in retrospect. When the next step reveals itself, there is something about the way that it manifested which oozes legitimacy and validity. When one says yes to it, and by Jove will one say yes, the beginning comes full circle and then the process starts.

There is some sort of shift in awareness; there is a tiny bit of soul that is possessed. One is a puppet with an awareness. Swung hither to thither, each move permitted by tenuously held openness, and as they begin to grind on the old fears saying “no,” becomes a good option. I realized that I was being pushed towards all those walls of anxiety and dark rubble that I’d hoped would be rendered non-existent by a spiritual breakthrough.  Every next craving that falls apart and each next would that is filled is not done magically, invisibly by the Practice alone. The Practice rouses something in our very psyche. Maybe, the exhilaration and that rare feeling of Triumph manifests when we ride this something with ease. This something acts beyond all things we are conscious of; it acts as consciousness itself, not thoughts, not even emotions, it is us, one and the same, and we are about to do something, we know, and that something is the next step to the aspect of us that thinks.

In this way we begin to cut through crowds as anything but what we understand ourselves to be. This is the ideal progression. I was, I am, aware of what I ought to do. But the invisible thing does not act on how I might happen to go about doing it; I think I can quite easily figure everything out if I think hard enough and stop giving in to blank anxiety. But even in these details the forces beyond the veil cut through. After this many months of meditation, it’s not uncommon for the absolute Presence to dawn while I’m walking down the street. The dawning of this state is a perfect thumbs up from the other side; it’s almost commonplace. On one occasion I found myself in a confused state, added onto the general confusion of this time, because I had been putting off a lot of small chores lately. Things like that tend to irk me off; too many undone jobs and I get completely burned out and have to reboot almost like a Terminator, blissfully oblivious to what I let go. The chores that have this capability tend to be those that are important to me: writing down a silly idea, researching on something, and the like. At the time I realized how much I have been procrastinating, and connected that with the feeling of gloom that had begun to settle down on me through the unproductive weekend. I wrote down the things I had to do so that I could soon get on to it. When I got out onto the street later, I found the state willingly dropping onto me.

In this way, the Primary Spiritual Practice gathers spiritual momentum that begins to change us and shape our lives. It is a process of interaction between the invisible thing inside of us and our regular selves. The feelings that form the alphabets of this language give hint to the all-knowing power of the invisible thing. There is the feeling of perfect synchronicity when working hand-in-hand with the force, and we can speculate that were it not for the downward pulls of our regular selves we can easily reach where we are supposed to be, which incidentally happens to be where we want to be (I have a nagging suspicion that the invisible self is also not separate from me but I myself!), all basking in awesomeness.