otherbrother
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Excerpt (concerning deep and wide spiritual practices and concepts) from my self-published book, Allsville Emerging:
Door of Deep:
In recent meditations, mind experiments, prayers, and dreams, I went deeper, inside of, consciousness. In one mind experiment, I was able to get inside of an uncontrollable cough while having a cold. I transcended the coughing response, to the point of cessation of coughing altogether. Effort to suppress the coughing had only made it worse. Going “deep into” the coughing seemed to be the key to stopping it.
At the same time, I received a vivid awareness, or epiphany, that illness is not “bad.” Illness is a window to the dynamic, spiritual, aspects of mind and existence. Even the ultimate disease of death is an opening to the “other side” of consciousness and life.
Later, I began to identify myself (my “self ”) as somehow in my breath, rather than seeing myself as being outside of the natural breathing process.
In another mind experiment, I attempted to get inside the pain from root canal dental work, without using medicine to numb me. I told the dentist in advance that I practiced meditation, and that I would like to have the procedure done without pain killer. He reluctantly honored my request, with the proviso that we would revert to anesthesia if I began to jerk too much.
My technique worked. I successfully mitigated the pain. The dentist was able to complete the procedure, without reverting to pain medications.
The experiment proved that there is some validity to mind over matter (at least over the little matter of pain!). It also showed that going deep is a useful intervention or technique. I was even a little disappointed when the mind experiment was over, when the root canal was finished. I was no longer a tourist in “Painville.” I could no longer examine its interesting avenues and cubby holes. My unusual vacation was over!
The Master Tool skill of deepening can also be applied to the art of emotional healing. In counseling, I encourage clients who profess a belief that they have a spirit to go deep within, and to connect with their spirit. They then re[1]approach the emotional distress with the power and perspective of spirit.
The result is often a miraculous shift to acceptance and peace. Another frequent result is a shift to a perception of personal competency, instead of hopelessness or depression. In some cases, this shift of awareness and mood is more than a temporary state. A few clients no longer need active forms of mental health interventions.
Interestingly, I noticed that, over the course of several years of providing individual psychotherapy and supportive counseling, I seemed to provide better therapy if I adjusted my eyes in such a way as to look deep into the person. I imagined that I was reading the client’s soul. I didn’t identify it as such at the time, but I later realized that I had been experiencing something called the “Gaffron Effect.”
The Gaffron Effect is the changed mental state reported by people when they focus their eyes to look past the surface of a thing, as though looking into or through the item. In the case of my clinical anecdote, the item happens to be a human being. The changes in my own mental state while using this technique allowed me to offer a different vibe (a more relaxed and/or more spiritual one) during the counseling sessions. And the vibe seemed to have therapeutic value.
In recent dreams, my consciousness has begun to shift deeper into specific images, until I find myself dreaming of mind activities that are independent of dream images. Once, I woke up dreaming of truth. Another time, I woke up with an awareness of having journeyed to the center of the mind. I felt exceptionally peaceful.
Yet another time, I woke up realizing that I was in a relaxed mental state, as though on vacation, regardless of the fact that I was actually waking up to get ready for work. I didn’t feel the need to even remember the dream content that had (probably) primed the mind pump for that vacation mode. The mode itself was, as far as I was concerned, the essence of the dream. Additional recall or interpretation would have been a waste of time, or—even worse—a distraction that might have taken me out of the mental response/mode. In reference again to the scene in the movie, Matrix, in which the child prodigy was bending spoons with his mind and was telling the main character, Neo, that “there is no “spoon,” there was no dream content in my mind—just the awareness of the mental state itself.
A similar mind trip occurred when I woke up one morning to the perception that the alarm buzzer was my best friend. This was after years of experiencing that noise as a dreadful thing that needed to be tolerated. To love it seemed absurd, yet very freeing.
Each of these dreaming-of-the-mind-dreaming experiences showed me how the mind can respond independently of the previously conditioned stimulus-response chains. My mind was breaking its own chains! The fact that the mind has this capacity to somehow perceive itself as it operates, or projects, is evidence that we have a means to use the whole mind, or the Master Tool. Going deep inside the mind seems to be one portal to this whole-mind “place.”
Door of Wide:
Going deep may not be as different as going wide (or whole) would first appear. Many people attribute the operator of the mind—the something or other behind the mind (as we normally think of “mind”)—as being the “soul,” the “inner self,” the “true self,” the “inner knower,” or the “third eye.” The implication is that the soul (I use the concept of soul here as being synonymous with “spirit.” There may be good case to be made for differentiating between the two, but we are not doing so here.) is separate from the mind. But soul and whole-mind are not necessarily two different entities.
Perhaps the whole is the soul. The whole of a being, thing, or system, may not be merely an artifact of its various parts, but may be the essence, or soul, of what it is. Plato thought that things and beings have an “ideal form.”
The whole form of, say, a chair—the dynamic, synergistic, way its parts fit and flow together to allow it to be a good place to sit—may be a simple soul. If the parts were to fit together in an essentially different whole pattern, such as one leg protruding from the top middle of the seat, then the chair would cease to be true to its essence. In effect, it would be alienated from its ideal form, its soul.
Author/philosopher Naim Akbar talks about the unhealthy cultural process of “miss-education” (a term he borrowed from educator Carter G. Woodson) as being “The cultivation of an alien identity.” When the “personal self ” (Akbar) identifies with roles or characteristics that are outside its true nature (or what I am calling its “ideal form”), then the self-identity is a poor copy which has lost wholeness. The self has lost its soul.
An old song that I remembered singing in bible school, Deep and Wide, now appears to have offered one of the most profound messages and side trips encountered during my many years of riding in the spiritual growth vehicle known as the Christian religion. The wisdom of the song appears to be in its acknowledgement of a connection—a “fountain flowing”—between deep and wide.
“Wide” seems to be referring to a state of wholeness or expansiveness, such as the state of whole-mind activity. Going deep accesses the energy mode, or “fountain,” that takes us wide. Going wide, or whole, seems to flow us into the depths of awareness and being. Just as receptiveness and wholeness seem closely related, so too are deepening-of-awareness and wholeness.
Ways to Widen Individual Consciousness
One of the ways that we can open up our minds toward a wider orientation is through individual meditations on literally wide phenomena. And the emphasis is on the word literally here. The idea of the “whole world,” for instance, is an abstraction that may be difficult to experience beyond the intellectual level. As such, it probably will not “move” us to experience empathy toward everyone in the world.
On the other hand, the concrete experience of a majestic mountain looming above us, and inspiring us with a sense of awe and humility, has the power to help set our mind on the wider focus we may need in order to effect world peace. Such inspirational scenes can be used to transform the individual mind toward a wider and more open state. Each individual mind, once opened up, can then have a healthy influence on the collective minds of nation and world.
Certain big, expansive, scenes naturally open up our consciousness to “something bigger than me.” Mountains and mountain vistas are not the only mind expanding scenes. As a boy, I would gaze up at the expansive sky on a summer night out in the country where there was little or no light pollution to limit the number of stars visible, nor to dim the brightness of each. The sky was full of stars.
My first recognition of something spiritual seemed to occur during that star gazing. I remember contrasting the concerns of typical conversations at the general store just down the road from where I lived, as compared to the vast unfolding of the universe as “told” by the starry sky. The stars talked to me. Somehow, I could relate more to those stars and to the big sky (which I could feel kinesthetically), than I ever could relate to the normal topics tossed around at the general store.
Those summer nights taught me to relate to the universe. In my own awkward way, I was beginning to work with the universe. And that expansive night sky is still one of the main images that comes to mind as I access my Source (Wayne Dyer’s term for God). In turn, my Source enables me to do with better. Wide begets wide.
Once, early in my correctional career as a Psychology Assistant, I was assigned the task to stand watch over an area of the prison yard during a fog alert. It was wintertime. There was a blanket of snow over the flat ground of the yard. I noticed that simply seeing the snow spread out in a continuous, very uniform, fashion stimulated my mind to enter into a peaceful state—probably alpha rhythms. I remember thinking that the long, wide, lines in the visual domain acted much like a mantra does in the auditory mode. The scene had acted as a yantra.
Since that moment, I have paid more attention to expansive scenes. I try to take full advantage of the peaceful effects they have on me. Large open fields in the Ohio landscapes surrounding me where I live have provided me with some meditation experiences that have been as fertile as the loamy soil in the fields themselves.
Door of Deep:
In recent meditations, mind experiments, prayers, and dreams, I went deeper, inside of, consciousness. In one mind experiment, I was able to get inside of an uncontrollable cough while having a cold. I transcended the coughing response, to the point of cessation of coughing altogether. Effort to suppress the coughing had only made it worse. Going “deep into” the coughing seemed to be the key to stopping it.
At the same time, I received a vivid awareness, or epiphany, that illness is not “bad.” Illness is a window to the dynamic, spiritual, aspects of mind and existence. Even the ultimate disease of death is an opening to the “other side” of consciousness and life.
Later, I began to identify myself (my “self ”) as somehow in my breath, rather than seeing myself as being outside of the natural breathing process.
In another mind experiment, I attempted to get inside the pain from root canal dental work, without using medicine to numb me. I told the dentist in advance that I practiced meditation, and that I would like to have the procedure done without pain killer. He reluctantly honored my request, with the proviso that we would revert to anesthesia if I began to jerk too much.
My technique worked. I successfully mitigated the pain. The dentist was able to complete the procedure, without reverting to pain medications.
The experiment proved that there is some validity to mind over matter (at least over the little matter of pain!). It also showed that going deep is a useful intervention or technique. I was even a little disappointed when the mind experiment was over, when the root canal was finished. I was no longer a tourist in “Painville.” I could no longer examine its interesting avenues and cubby holes. My unusual vacation was over!
The Master Tool skill of deepening can also be applied to the art of emotional healing. In counseling, I encourage clients who profess a belief that they have a spirit to go deep within, and to connect with their spirit. They then re[1]approach the emotional distress with the power and perspective of spirit.
The result is often a miraculous shift to acceptance and peace. Another frequent result is a shift to a perception of personal competency, instead of hopelessness or depression. In some cases, this shift of awareness and mood is more than a temporary state. A few clients no longer need active forms of mental health interventions.
Interestingly, I noticed that, over the course of several years of providing individual psychotherapy and supportive counseling, I seemed to provide better therapy if I adjusted my eyes in such a way as to look deep into the person. I imagined that I was reading the client’s soul. I didn’t identify it as such at the time, but I later realized that I had been experiencing something called the “Gaffron Effect.”
The Gaffron Effect is the changed mental state reported by people when they focus their eyes to look past the surface of a thing, as though looking into or through the item. In the case of my clinical anecdote, the item happens to be a human being. The changes in my own mental state while using this technique allowed me to offer a different vibe (a more relaxed and/or more spiritual one) during the counseling sessions. And the vibe seemed to have therapeutic value.
In recent dreams, my consciousness has begun to shift deeper into specific images, until I find myself dreaming of mind activities that are independent of dream images. Once, I woke up dreaming of truth. Another time, I woke up with an awareness of having journeyed to the center of the mind. I felt exceptionally peaceful.
Yet another time, I woke up realizing that I was in a relaxed mental state, as though on vacation, regardless of the fact that I was actually waking up to get ready for work. I didn’t feel the need to even remember the dream content that had (probably) primed the mind pump for that vacation mode. The mode itself was, as far as I was concerned, the essence of the dream. Additional recall or interpretation would have been a waste of time, or—even worse—a distraction that might have taken me out of the mental response/mode. In reference again to the scene in the movie, Matrix, in which the child prodigy was bending spoons with his mind and was telling the main character, Neo, that “there is no “spoon,” there was no dream content in my mind—just the awareness of the mental state itself.
A similar mind trip occurred when I woke up one morning to the perception that the alarm buzzer was my best friend. This was after years of experiencing that noise as a dreadful thing that needed to be tolerated. To love it seemed absurd, yet very freeing.
Each of these dreaming-of-the-mind-dreaming experiences showed me how the mind can respond independently of the previously conditioned stimulus-response chains. My mind was breaking its own chains! The fact that the mind has this capacity to somehow perceive itself as it operates, or projects, is evidence that we have a means to use the whole mind, or the Master Tool. Going deep inside the mind seems to be one portal to this whole-mind “place.”
Door of Wide:
Going deep may not be as different as going wide (or whole) would first appear. Many people attribute the operator of the mind—the something or other behind the mind (as we normally think of “mind”)—as being the “soul,” the “inner self,” the “true self,” the “inner knower,” or the “third eye.” The implication is that the soul (I use the concept of soul here as being synonymous with “spirit.” There may be good case to be made for differentiating between the two, but we are not doing so here.) is separate from the mind. But soul and whole-mind are not necessarily two different entities.
Perhaps the whole is the soul. The whole of a being, thing, or system, may not be merely an artifact of its various parts, but may be the essence, or soul, of what it is. Plato thought that things and beings have an “ideal form.”
The whole form of, say, a chair—the dynamic, synergistic, way its parts fit and flow together to allow it to be a good place to sit—may be a simple soul. If the parts were to fit together in an essentially different whole pattern, such as one leg protruding from the top middle of the seat, then the chair would cease to be true to its essence. In effect, it would be alienated from its ideal form, its soul.
Author/philosopher Naim Akbar talks about the unhealthy cultural process of “miss-education” (a term he borrowed from educator Carter G. Woodson) as being “The cultivation of an alien identity.” When the “personal self ” (Akbar) identifies with roles or characteristics that are outside its true nature (or what I am calling its “ideal form”), then the self-identity is a poor copy which has lost wholeness. The self has lost its soul.
An old song that I remembered singing in bible school, Deep and Wide, now appears to have offered one of the most profound messages and side trips encountered during my many years of riding in the spiritual growth vehicle known as the Christian religion. The wisdom of the song appears to be in its acknowledgement of a connection—a “fountain flowing”—between deep and wide.
“Wide” seems to be referring to a state of wholeness or expansiveness, such as the state of whole-mind activity. Going deep accesses the energy mode, or “fountain,” that takes us wide. Going wide, or whole, seems to flow us into the depths of awareness and being. Just as receptiveness and wholeness seem closely related, so too are deepening-of-awareness and wholeness.
Ways to Widen Individual Consciousness
One of the ways that we can open up our minds toward a wider orientation is through individual meditations on literally wide phenomena. And the emphasis is on the word literally here. The idea of the “whole world,” for instance, is an abstraction that may be difficult to experience beyond the intellectual level. As such, it probably will not “move” us to experience empathy toward everyone in the world.
On the other hand, the concrete experience of a majestic mountain looming above us, and inspiring us with a sense of awe and humility, has the power to help set our mind on the wider focus we may need in order to effect world peace. Such inspirational scenes can be used to transform the individual mind toward a wider and more open state. Each individual mind, once opened up, can then have a healthy influence on the collective minds of nation and world.
Certain big, expansive, scenes naturally open up our consciousness to “something bigger than me.” Mountains and mountain vistas are not the only mind expanding scenes. As a boy, I would gaze up at the expansive sky on a summer night out in the country where there was little or no light pollution to limit the number of stars visible, nor to dim the brightness of each. The sky was full of stars.
My first recognition of something spiritual seemed to occur during that star gazing. I remember contrasting the concerns of typical conversations at the general store just down the road from where I lived, as compared to the vast unfolding of the universe as “told” by the starry sky. The stars talked to me. Somehow, I could relate more to those stars and to the big sky (which I could feel kinesthetically), than I ever could relate to the normal topics tossed around at the general store.
Those summer nights taught me to relate to the universe. In my own awkward way, I was beginning to work with the universe. And that expansive night sky is still one of the main images that comes to mind as I access my Source (Wayne Dyer’s term for God). In turn, my Source enables me to do with better. Wide begets wide.
Once, early in my correctional career as a Psychology Assistant, I was assigned the task to stand watch over an area of the prison yard during a fog alert. It was wintertime. There was a blanket of snow over the flat ground of the yard. I noticed that simply seeing the snow spread out in a continuous, very uniform, fashion stimulated my mind to enter into a peaceful state—probably alpha rhythms. I remember thinking that the long, wide, lines in the visual domain acted much like a mantra does in the auditory mode. The scene had acted as a yantra.
Since that moment, I have paid more attention to expansive scenes. I try to take full advantage of the peaceful effects they have on me. Large open fields in the Ohio landscapes surrounding me where I live have provided me with some meditation experiences that have been as fertile as the loamy soil in the fields themselves.