Pineal gland/ third eye awakening

After some weeks of one-pointed meditating on the third eye I now realise there is a fourth level or stage to this meditation.  Getting past the relaxation, the light that plays on the screen behind my eyelids and the sense of spaciousness I found my self dissolving - at least my ego self.  This was startling to say the least.  It didn't last long - just a glimpse.  The next day I was reading some David Icke.  After all the conspiracy stuff in the middle of his books he usually gives some paractical solutions at the end. I can't find the exact quote but it was along the lines of "you are not your name, you are not your story, you are not the reflection in the mirror".  As I read those words it was like a light flash in my head and a great weight fell off me - I finally "got" it - it was no longer an abstract intellectualisation.  I went to bed to sleep on it but woke up at three in the morning feeling again like I was dissolving and at the same time ecstatically happy with tears streaming down my face.  I was like that for what seemed like and hour or two.  Finally I had the presence of mind to say to myself - "just breathe", "witness it". I felt truly grateful for the experience.

The next day though I felt deeply restless and in need of reassurance about what I had experienced.  I got on the web looking searching for information about nirvana but that didn't do it for me I think because so many writers equate nirvana with a bliss state and that wasn't it for me - it was more a falling away of the conditioned self revealing what is always there underneath all that, although some say the Buddha called it "cessation" which seems to me more applicable.  Tried searching on "Samadhi"and yes there did seem to be some levels of this that described it and what I was feeling afterward.  Then I came across writers like Andreas Mamet, Adyashanti and Nirmala who seemed to be describing it - something called a Non-dual tradition.

Andreas Mamet says in Sutras for Contemporary Times that there are awakenings that come from one pointed meditation on four of the chakras: the hara or second chakra, the heart chakra, the third eye and the crown or top of the head.  They apparently differ in quality, third eye awakenings presenting in a "clear and luminous" way.  My intuition says to work my meditation next with my hara for stability and balance. Especially as it took me nearly a week after my awakening to stop feeling like a bit of flotsom slopping around on an unsettled sea.  Mamet says that "when consciousness really happens it comes at you with the subtlety of a nuclear explosion" and that "the event leaves one reeling and dealing with this explosion and the need of connecting it with the continuing ordinariness of life, which does not stop".  I can really resonate with this. I am very glad that it hit me just before a five day break but even then its taken all of 9 days to get a little steadiness back.

I think to be honest that one could achieve this state without mediation - an "aha' moment where the veils of conditioned reality fell off. Possibly also through a near-death experience.  But I can only relay my own experience of how it happened for me.  I certainly don't see it as an end in itself, more of a beginning and I intend to keep meditating and learning from it. Certainly there are no initial outward changes in my ordinary everyday conditioned self/persona - may be there won't be, may be there will - does it really even matter to me now. One thing I've noticed as a consequence though is I feel a whole lot less fear of death and loss. The contradictions on this planet I now see as "they are what they are", there is not a sense of being in opposition to those contradiction.  I'm going to have to weed a lot of the books in my library that I now see as a lot of twaddle.

Pineal Gland Mediation: spaciousness and letting go of the analytic overlay

As described in my last post I've been doing pineal gland mediation using a mix of techniques from those outlined by Jill Ammon-Wexler I experienced three stages to the mediation:

1. Relaxation - Breathing, letting go muscle tension, forgiving and letting go any baggage or future fears and slowly bringing the wandering mind to the focus point of the meditation
2. Focus - focusing on the third eye and becoming aware of colours played on the screen behind the closed eye lids and awareness of sensations which a friend tells me are called "Nyam" in Tibetan Buddhism.  Then letting go of my attachment to these things, releasing all expectations and assumptions about the meditation session and going into next stage
3. Spaciousness - one of the best descriptions of this I found on a page put out by Krishnamurti Australia http://www.krishnamurtiaustralia.org/articles/meditation%201.htm "The meditative mind has no horizon... Meditation is opening the door into spaciousness which cannot be imagined or speculated upon... Silence and spaciousness go together. The immensity of silence is the immensity of the mind in which a center does not exist. The perception of this space and silence is not of thought." 

Russell Targ in Limitless Mind pulls ideas from Dzogchen to explain the distinction between conditioned experience and naked awareness as it relates to the experience of remote viewing.  Naked awareness arises when you let go of analysis, memory and imagination (the analytic overlay) and simply experience, naked of conditioning or expectations.  I think this has direct application to mediating where the need is to:

• let go of the past and future and be mindful in the now (this includes forgiving the past and letting go of fears for the future in preparation for meditation).
• let go of what we are told to expect in meditation, including this blog post
• let go of our memory of previous meditations that might give us expectations in the present
• witness the experience rather than analyse it
• quiet the imagination.  If shapes or colours appear on the screen behind the eyes I don't analyse or try to interpret them or try to imagine greater detail in them. Just observe, let it be and let it pass.

Some of the Nyam, or sensations, that I have experienced so far during meditation, at random times and not all together, are:

• a tingling over the third eye
• a tingling over the crown chakra
• skin crawling sensations in the scalp
• a lightness around the eyes
• a lightness in the head - not as in light-headedness - more like a cool, relaxed lightness.
• heat in the body, particularly the hands
• and a headache centred on the third eye, which I only go once and I think this came from getting stuck in the focus stage of the mediation, that is not releasing.

All these nyam are potential distractions, I witness them and let them pass. The time I got a headache I just stopped the meditation and had a break from doing any more mediation til it passed.

Gluten Free Vegan Scones

Pre heat oven to 220C
In a mixing bowl put
1 cup sweet sorghum flour
a table spoon of chia seeds
a table spoon of psyllium seeds
rub in about two tablespoons of coconut oil into the mixture
Add just enough water (usually only a tablespoon or so) to get a mixture you can knead in your hands. The mixture must be firm.

Shape into scone size amounts and put on a tray, greased with coconut oil and set aside for 5 minutes to allow the chia and psyllium to swell - this creates a semi-raised texture. They still won't rise as much as true scones but they are yummy and for non sugar eaters like me the sweet sorghum flour makes them taste quite sweet.
cook for 20 minutes
makes about 5-6 smallish "scones".
Blueberries or other flavourings can be added to the mixture to vary.

Learn a language using visualization

Certainly vizualisation shouldn't be the only method you use to practise and learn a foreign language but it can be a very effective way, especially when you're somewhere native speakers of the language are rare.

I'm currently enjoying an older out of print book called "Breakthrough Greek" to develop my understanding of modern Greek a bit further.  The beauty of their approach is using short dialogues with explanations on the facing page. I first read the dialogue through without reference to the vocabulary or explanations and see what my brain can work out based on what it already knows or can guess.  Then I read the vocab and explanations and reread the dialogue and practise saying it out load.  I've already learnt the alphabet but if I was learning that too I would write the passage out.  I then visualize having the conversation with another person. I mentally substitute some of the words with others I know. If the dialog covers stuff that's very new to me I leave it for a day or so then come back to it - this gives my brain time to have rewired. When I do meet a helpful native speaker I try some of it out.

Pineal Gland meditation part 2: surfing the brain

This is about my third week of meditating on the pineal gland using the techniques outlined in Jill Ammon-Wexler's ebook on the pineal gland. What I've learnt so far is not to try too hard or get hung up on the results. If my mind wants to wander then I let it muse a bit, valuable insights come from this, then I gently steer my focus back to resting my minds eye at that point between the brow. Sometimes the indigo colours I get at the start of mediation elude me and when that happens I surrender all expectations and either send love from my heart chakra to my third eye or do a breath through my nose and sending it towards the third eye, down into my abdomen and then breathing out through the mouth to really let go.

Once I'm "in" and my focus locks on then so far there seems to be a couple of distinct stages.  The first stage is experiencing the colours and lights on the screen behind the eyes.  This is heightened by wearing a light proof mask and using a darkened room.  I got a mask off ebay that has built in therapeutic magnets for the acupressure points and this seems to help greatly.  What I experienced last night during this phase was a world of light and an awareness of my body as light.  I experimented with how different thoughts and feelings and attitudes affected this light. I can't quite find the words to describe it yet.  The second phase I've experienced when I do a long mediation, about 40 minutes in the screen show stops and there is a sense that there is only consciousness and there is a sense of being everywhere and nowhere. Struggling to express it - it seems to be a loss of the sense of locality.

I'm still sometimes using Brainwave Tuner app on my android tablet, which I updated last week from the lite to the full version. The best one for me has been the sleeep induction which use to take me to the edge of sleep but I don't let myself go to sleep.  From my reading about brainwaves this would seem to be the best way to get into the delta waves of lucid dreaming or insights.

What if we wake up tomorrow all sharing the one mind?

What if...?
If we woke up tomorrow and we were all of one mind what would it mean?
If we could heal anyone by simply loving ourself and them as part of ourself?
If we could pull any idea we were interested in from the unified field of consciousness?
If we didn't need to protect ourself from ourself?
If we could travel anywhere in space and time with simply the thought?
If we didn't need even half of what we now need, let alone desire...?

If positive thinking is about visualizing an outcome and then giving thanks for it as if it already exists in our lives then maybe this is something worth pondering.

Experiencing Pineal Gland Activation Week 1 results

I've been been using the diet and exercises in Power Up Your Brain - Perlmutter, David, Villoldo, Alberto for some weeks and then read  Pineal Gland and Third Eye: How to Develop "Conscious Self" Psychic Abilities  by Jill Ammon-Wexler which gave me actual techniques to use to activate the pineal gland. I also availed myself of some brainwave music using the Android application "Brain Tuner Lite".

What I've been doing on almost a daily basis for about the last ten day is 

• lying down
• listening to the "self-hypnosis" setting on the "Brain tuner lite" program
• starting out with a few minutes of alternate nose breathing (to balance both sides of the brain apparantly)
• then when my arms start to ache from that I just put my arms down at my sides or do the hand position (mudra) the Jill Ammon-Wexler recommends.  Relaxed I close my eyes and breathe in through my nose, focusing my breath up to the third eye and then releasing the breath out through my mouth.  I do this for a little bit until I'm suitably focused on the third eye and deeply relaxed.
• then my own innovation is to send loving thoughts to my third eye and just rest my awareness there seeing what I see on the screen behind my closed eyes.

The first few times I tried this nothing special happened and then about the third time I saw swirly colours of indigo, almost an electric blue - really quite pretty.  I am ware I must not get fixated on such effects but at the moment I'm using it as feedback that I'm doing the right thing.  After the first time this happened I got nothing over the next couple of days.  The two reasons I put down for that is that I was trying to hard and the other was it was the middle of my work week (lack of time and too much work stuff on the mind).  At the end of the week I had more time and determined I was going to give it my best shot and go really deeply into it even it took some time to really relax and clear myself of expectations.  This time I got the colours again. I tried twice more that day and got the same results - the later times without the brainwave music and mudra.  I think the brain is starting to learn the pathways and its getting easier each time. Today it was quite easy to achieve and even with my eyes opening and not trying to meditate I can still focus on my third eye point and get a sense of what I feel during meditation. The colours during meditation are now more sustained - not just the occassional flashes.

What I don't know is what to expect if I keep going with this - so I'll have to do some research on the web and just keep experimenting.