Monday, September 27, 2010
Every Exhale is a Letting Go
Buddha became enlightened with an exhale (nir=out +vana=wind = nirvana). Jesus tore the veil of separation with an exhale (pneuma fyi john 19:30) and entered into unity consciousness. Every exhale is a microsurrender into the Divine and causes a micro-wave of relaxation that can be seen/felt. The only thing that prevents it from being total surrender are resistant thoughts that we are attached to and still identify with. What would happen if we concentrated so deeply on the natural mantra of breathing that all resistant thoughts were let go moment to moment with each exhale until we reached "no thought samadhi" (complete absorption without distraction in the object of attention aka breathing)?
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Footnote1: This can be deepened by using the primordial Dzogchen mantra "Ah" which is also the most condensed version of the Heart Sutra. "Ah" is the sound of letting go. If you have the mental intention to surrender and the mental intention to aspirate the sound "Ah" on the exhale (the two intentions being one intention), the intention will shape, deepen, and focus the exhale and make every exhale cut through resistant thoughts until no thought samadhi is reached.
ReplyDeleteah
ReplyDeleteImported from a parallel entry on Facebook:
ReplyDeleteEncarnacion Perez Jr: So, humanity is "waiting to exhale?" For what I wonder?
@Encarnacion, I was just thinking about the movie with that title! The Buddha said that when there is the release and cessation of the three poisons of the mind (through exhaling, through nirvana) of craving, negativity, and delusion, tha...t sorrow ends, and one directly feels "the unborn, the unchanging, and the undying" and according to the Mahaparinirvana Sutra you get four things: bliss, eternity, self, and freedom.
ReplyDeleteI am getting that through conscious exhaling, keeping in focused awareness of the "out wind" (nir=out, vana=wind), letting go of the usual wandering extraneous thoughts that keep our history and our story running, that you can have a kind of microsurrender and microenlightenment. The Sufis found that the usual ego consciousness that we think we are but are not really, which is composed of a running thought commentary and thought reactions to sensory stimuli, can only exist for a maximum of 10 seconds in every 12 second interval, but we are usually unaware of when it disappears. The 2 second gap is called "a moment of freedom". In France, there is apparently an order of Franciscan Monks that practice only moving within those moments of freedom in order to expand them and make it last longer. When they are doing their farming, they will occasionally freeze, not move at all, until the ego thought wave ends, and then continue. The practice requires some sensitization to do. The initiation is to see if you notice one and you try to draw a perfect circle about 5 inches in diameter. When you notice you have draw a good one unselfconsciously in one of the gaps, you are considered to have passed and are calibrated enough to do this method. In the gap there is a different kind of time. The time of thought feels robotic by comparison. I feel that if you are conscious in each exhale, that you will also feel this moment of freedom "at its tip".
Imported from a parallel entry on Facebook:
ReplyDeleteEdward T. Babinski: What about inhaling? I know you've got to say a lot about the other side of breathing as well.
@Ed, On the blog there is a mapping of not only what inhale and exhale mean, but also the point where the inhale turns into the exhale and the exhale turns into the inhale. The inhale is about receiving and about choosing to live in the m...oment, fully taking in what is given in the moment. The more fully and freely we inhale, without strain, the more open we are to what is present. When we are guarded, then we sometimes even hold our breath. When we do not want to feel an emotion, we will hold our breath. Where the inhale turns into the exhale, this is the "pure body" point, where we are our bodies and fully embody our life on Earth. Where the exhale turns into the the inhale, this is the "pure spirit" point, where we are not our bodies, not our thoughts, not our emotions, not our sensations, not our choices, not any "thing" at all, emptiness, nobody ("nobody is perfect"), no self, no mind. The complete circle of breathing, the inhale, turning, exhale, turning, inhale again, etc. is the unity of the truth of life felt beyond the affirmation and negation of thought.
ReplyDeleteFacebook parallel entry:
ReplyDeleteEvery inhale is choosing to live right here, right now, and be present to this moment.
Facebook paralle entry:
ReplyDeleteEncarnacion Perez Jr So, absent-mindedness is not an option?
Facebook parallel entry:
ReplyDeleteWilliam Bagley @Encarnation, absent-mindedness=holding the breath when an emotion is surfacing plus only breathing into the part of the lungs just below the shoulders. Unless you are talking about "no mind" at all...
Facebook parallel entry:
ReplyDeleteThe place where the exhale turns into inhale is where the small self vanishes, no thought, no emotion, no sensation, no body, empty and peaceful.
Facebook parallel entry, continuing about the "turning point" where exhale become inhale:
ReplyDeleteThis is a more subtle point to notice. This takes a sensitivity that might need some time lying down and noticing the breathing as it is. We tend to go unconscious whenever the ego or small self disappears. We usually do not notice that ...it disappears for at least 2 seconds out of every 12 second time interval. It is not a constant self and even when it does seem to exist that it is a construction or illusion, just a stream of sometimes very unconnected thoughts, emotions, and sensations that we identify with, with many gaps. The usual feeling of self also disappears in NREM sleep. Hindus say that if we can be aware during this interval, then we can become enlightened. Because of this disappearance of "self", brain researchers consider the whole sense of self to be an epiphenomena of electro-chemical activity in the brain. The Buddha became enlightened when he realized "no self" (anatta) and did associate nirvana with the exhale (nir=out, vana=wind). The "tip of the exhale" mentioned previously is when the exhale movement comes to an end, when all the air we release and can release comes to zero, and the breath is about to turn and go back inside the body. This "turning" place is mentioned in the Vigyana Bhairava Tantra attributed to Shiva and is one of the first 8 methods of liberation taught in this text. When we first notice the "turning point" (pun intended), it may seem like "nothing is happening". One of the challenges is that we are still associating with the reference point of the small self, creating an observer, a mass of thoughts, emotions, sensations, and reactions that is always analyzing and commenting on our life, which is addicted to sensations, afraid of abandonment, attached to approval, resists things it has judged as bad, fights for things it has judged as good, and projects a highly edited version of reality as an overlay to what is really happening without updating its data very much. In the effort to feel this turning gap, it is important to "not bring in the observer". If we feel the exhale as a let go, then it will be easier to do. If you do it "right", it is possible for the turning point to "blow your mind" and feel an expansion into infinity, to feel like the whole cosmos, with its bright stars and vast infinity space, crystal clear silence (like a night sky deep in the mountains) all arising inside you. It feels at times like the back of your head is blown open and the night sky and infinite space is inside you, looking at the human world. This is big expansive mind. If you hang out with this long enough, you may notice that this space is filled luminosity, a radiant field of shimmering energy, dancing quantum particles of light, spinning vortexes of alive space, the geometry of interwoven quantum strings, and the feeling of unconditional love, intuitive wisdom, and infinite creativity.
From a parallel Facebook entry:
ReplyDeleteThe place where the inhale turns into the exhale is where presence and embodiment is felt, centered two inches below the navel and three inches within, the gravitational center, rooted in the Earth, extending down through the feet, ready to rise up the spine and interact with life, being a mind, heart, and body in a world filled with equals.
From a parallel Facebook entry:
ReplyDeleteIf this turning point is hard to fully feel, it is possible to just "hold breath" and concentrate on being aware to feel "presence," "centeredness," and "embodiment". In martial arts, exhale and extension go together, drawing power from th...e feet rooted in the Earth, and extending the power through the arms to block, counterstrike or to harmonize and neutralize. The turning is the moment before we interact, where we are simply here and simply now, not reacting or feeling a need to react to what is. If we pause here and start to do daydreaming or thinking, we can be "lost in thought", "wandering mental worlds", and "spacing out", we are then like a ghost that is not quite here and not quite not here.
From a parallel Facebook entry:
ReplyDeleteThe inhale, exhale, place where the inhale turns into exhale, and the place where the exhale turns into inhale are a unity. When all joined without pauses becomes one smooth circle of breathing, flowing with life, not getting stuck anywhere, easily integrating our experience, being relaxed and natural, including and t...ranscending thinking, beyond self and no self, celebrating life.
From a parallel Facebook entry:
ReplyDeleteThe pauses are where we disconnect from the flow of life into a kind of intellectual rehearsal. When we do this, it is like stepping out of a river and watching it go by without us. The river is the flow of life and we are meant to go wit...h the flow moment to moment. The river has movement propelled by the grace and blessing of life. This grace and blessing has the divine wish that all beings be happy and that all being celebrate the wonder of existence. Every breath burns away adverse karma until there is none left and there is only celebration. Removing the pauses also means integration, joining everything to everything, including every seeming polarity to life. Just as a river needs two banks to flow within, we transcend and include all polarities for our life to flow. We do not cling to or resist either bank. When we remove the pauses, then we are beyond self and no self, beyond feeling and no feeling, beyond thinking and no thinking, beyond sensation and no sensation, beyond body and no body, and beyond oneness and separateness. Life spontaneously fulfills its four purposes, easily and naturally, of survival, healing, growth, and celebration. We feel supported by life and at home in life. We realize that there is no death, just change. The smooth circle makes the breathing slightly faster. The inhale is deep and full and the exhale is long and smooth, but never to the point of strain. Ease, simplicity, spontaneous integration, and joy are part of this breathing. Beyond polarity, it is possible to relax into pain and transmute it into joy. The smooth circle itself morphs into the figure 8 of the infinity loop, with the place where inhale becomes exhale and the exhale becomes inhale being the little "x" in the middle, the gently switching junction between two loops. This is the infinite natural breathing we can always do, always ride, and through which we can heal and outlive every problem we have.
From a parallel Facebook entry:
ReplyDeleteRebecca Sonchek: Ive been in deep meditation about this universal theme for days- looks like we are riding a similar wave Will. Blessings to you and us and we :)
From a parallel Facebook entry:
ReplyDeleteSharon Miranda: Will, just as i was coming here to send you a message, here is a message from you to all that is perfect for me in this moment.
From a parallel Facebook entry:
ReplyDeleteLeah Hopkins That's quite beautiful, William. Should we call you Will, Bill, William...? Anyway, there is 'no-thing' in a name. I so appreciate your prose! Thank you, whoever you like to be called ;-)!
From a parallel Facebook entry:
ReplyDelete@Leah, Will or William is fine. I am usually called "Will". Thank you for your thoughts.
From a parallel Facebook entry:
ReplyDeleteEach cycle of inhale, turning, exhale, and turning, generates a prana wave through the body, moving through the meridian system, nourishing all the cells with more than oxygen, and cleansing the cells with more than the release of carbon dioxide. Muscle tissues relax and release the emotions locked in their once chron...ic tightness, allowing them to surface to consciousness where they can simply be felt and dissolve.
From a parallel Facebook entry:
ReplyDeleteIf you do 20 cycles of "conscious connected breathing", you will most likely feel the prana waves as warm tingling sensations, warm currents, and spontaneous muscle relaxation. If you do 100 cycles, taking care that the belly expands on t...he inhale and softens on the exhale, that the inhale is full enough to gently expand and push against rib cage (both the front and back of the body), so that full lung breathing is present, then the prana should be felt strong enough to know that this energy is real and available to us for our survival, healing, growth, and celebration. The feeling of this energy is blissful, quietly joyous. It is called psychophysical peace in Buddhist meditation texts. Once felt one can easily leap to feeling the peace of abiding in pure awareness (and then make the two one). Even when the emotions surfacing are painful, we can place attention on the blissfulness of the prana wave and allow this to help us relax into the feeling process, so that we do not cling to, resist, or analyze (think about) our emotional flow. Like a bubble surfacing naturally from the bottom of a lake and disappearing on the surface, if we do nothing but breathe the emotions will spontaneously liberate themselves. They need to surface in an atmosphere of loving acceptance, since they were once shamed into being repressed. Sometimes we will be afraid of being punished again for having these emotions, because the environment of our childhood did not make us feel safe to have them. Emotions and breathing make us feel alive. The intellect can help us know and understand life, but it does not by itself feel anything. Enlightenment can happen through breathing when all resistance ends to being here and now, without clinging, without resistance, without recoiling into thoughts that detach us from our present experience, without thoughts that form a sense of a self separate from life and reinforce a feeling of being lonely and abandoned. This emotional wave can surface and dissolve in an ocean of pranic oneness. When we do enough cycles of breathing, we reach "breath release", where all the habits of resistive breathing dissolve and the intention to breathe aligns with just simple natural breathing, and the breath starts breathing us, that we breathe from the breath itself, then we feel one with everything, deeply and fully, joyously and peacefully, and know all events, objects, and people are permeated by luminousity and are part of this energy.
From a parallel Facebook entry:
ReplyDeleteBjorg Smidt: Beautiful!
From a parallel Facebook entry (two combined):
ReplyDeleteWith a commitment to devote one hour each day to conscious connected breathing, completing cycle after cycle of breathing, easeful mastery of this breathing is attained. The first mastery is to feel tingling sensations in the body. This is a sign of the life force energy moving through the body. The second mastery is to ride three emotional waves from its initial release from the chronic tensions of the body to the point where it dissolves into luminosity. The first emotional wave is to ride fear to completion. The second is to ride anger. The third is to ride sadness. Fear transmutes into wisdom, responsibility, and trust. Anger transmutes into creativity, clarity, and assertiveness. Sadness transmutes into compassion, appreciation, and gratitude. The second mastery is a sign that we are able to be with our experience without clinging, resistance, or unconsciousness. The emotions undergo many spontaneous changes as they rise up through our chakras. Each of our chakras, our internal energy centers, processes and changes the emotion, and then passes the energy up to the next chakra above, until the remaining energy is released into the crown chakra to be reabsorbed back into primal luminosity. The energy moves up the spine to meet each of these chakras until ejected out the soft spot at the top of the head and released into infinity.
The body is a manifestation of the subconscious mind, the storehouse of all of our memories. There are many different kinds of memory. There is a kind of objective memory of every event that we have ever moved through. There is also a memory of all our unresolved wounds from the past. This kind of emotional memory is composed of samskaras. They are emotionally charged memories of events surrounded with mental beliefs that we have decided are true about life. These samskaras are the seed form of all our afflicted karmas. They attract their fulfillment by vibrating a kind of magnetic energy outwards and eventually hooking into a similar from the environment according to the law of "like attracts like". In terms of balancing karma, the polarities are reversed. The victim and perpetrator constantly switch roles. The way our activated karmas converge to form the events of our lives is parallel to the way all the laws of physics shape the material events that happen. It is sometimes hard to trace a single line of causation through the infinity of interactions that happen to form each event, but the patterns of causation do conform to law and manifest with precision. All afflicted karmas are related to a traumatic memory and are surrounded by delusional beliefs. When we have delusional beliefs, it means our minds are not fully tuned in to the truth of life. When Jesus says, "You shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free," he points to the release of all such delusions or obscurations. We live under grace. It radiates like the sun in the sky and touches us all alike. We are always swimming in an infinite ocean of blissful prana and manifesting our empirical life according to the laws of manifestation. We have collectively created an illusion of a loveless world filled with war, death, disease, famine, disasters, and poverty. Once we abide in the primal sea of blissful prana once more, then we can learn to collectively manifest a love filled world, a pure land, where life is always only a celebration. Every samskara released from our subconscious mind, from the chronic tensions of our bodies, evolves us, step by step, into a light body and our world into a pure land.
From a parallel Facebook entry:
ReplyDeleteEliahu Beleck: Nice. Good job putting it all into words. :-)
From a parallel Facebook entry:
ReplyDeleteKathryn Morse: This is good! William, are you going to put this in one of your blogs or somewhere that we can bookmark easily?
From a parallel Facebook entry:
ReplyDelete(posted the above URL for this site)
I cut and pasted the entries here to the above blog site, Kathryn, thank you for your thoughts.
From a parallel Facebook entry:
ReplyDeleteThe word "conspiracy" means "to breathe together" and originally refered to the living community of liberated compassionate beings that had breathed into enlightenment, bliss, freedom and oneness. Because of having breathed into oneness, their breathing is synchronized with each other so that they are interlinked as one large breathing organism. This has been called "the Mahasangha", "the communion of Saints", and "the Body of the Christ".
The third mastery is called "breath release". This is where we learn to "breathe from the breath itself". This is where the artificial separate self that we constructed by thought dissolves completely, never being who we thought we were, and loses its grip on our breathing. Until we have breath release, there is always a subtle ego control of the breathing. It resists experiences by holding the breath, by pushing the exhale too strongly, by making the inhale too thin and shallow, and by tightening the body around the lungs, neck, jaw, and belly. When we learn to allow relaxation, allow emotions, and surrender into the flow of life, then we surrender this ego control and the grace of life begins to breathe in us and for us. It has carried us throughout our lives anyway, but only when we are too unconscious to interfere and inspite of our resistive control. With breath release we have reached the first degree of enlightenment, experience a satori, a oneness with life, and intuitively feel the truth of life directly. This enlightenment, while deep and profound, may be transitory, and can still be clouded by the action of still unresolved samskaras stored without the subconscious mind and still yet to be released into experience when triggered by sensory experience. It is sometimes called "nirvana with residue" (something is left to still work through but the something no longer blocks a basic inner peace and flowing with life).
The fourth mastery is attuning and linking with the mahasangha. This is where attention is placed at the 3rd eye and some of the prana flows to nourish the evolution of the pineal and pituitary glands (the organic base of the 3rd eye chakra, the pineal gland being the yang aspect and the pituitary gland being the yin aspect). There is an intention to link with mahasangha and serve the divine plan for the healing of this world. A subtle telepathic guidance, in the language of light and intuition, will flow from them to you and synchronize your breathing with their breathing. You become part of the living being who wishes to heal this world, one of the one thousand arms of Avalochiteshvara, the Bodhisattva of Compassion. There is a surge of prana when this link is made which is further amplified and deepened as we breathe. The shared energy on this level is vaster than our personal in the body energy by itself. We join the ancient conspiracy of light and have the confidence that this world will eventually be completely healed and will eventually become a pure land. What we have is shared with this community of light and what the community of light has is shared with us. With patience, skill, wisdom, and compassion, each working in harmony with the others, the mahasangha will eventually heal this world. This love based conspiracy will outshine and heal even the power, fear, and authority based conspiracies of the world. These conspiracies are strangely not resonant with the original meaning of the word, since the power based beings rarely breathe deep or well, do not breathe in sync with each other, and often compete with each other. The strange glory of their world is slowly passing away as the real conspiracy of breathing hearts slowly and gently takes over. One species emerging and evolving to replace the previous one.
When the breathing is guided by the waves of prajna (intuitive wisdom) coming from the Mahasangha, it responds to what is arising within us, occasionally shifting gears to navigate the terrain, shifting to second gear to climb a difficult hill and shifting to fifth gear to sail down an open highway.
ReplyDeleteThe fifth mastery is to ride the breathing with intuitive wisdom and to deepen intuitive wisdom by riding the breath. We flow with whatever is arising. The breathing is not a rigid mechanical rhythm, but a jazz like rhythm that develops and changes with the passages in the song. When we flow long enough with this wisdom, we experience gentle bliss waves, a rain of particles of joy descending upon us, warm currents flowing through the body, memory pictures surfacing vividly and then disappearing, flashes of insight integrating and releasing previously unresolved emotions, and a clear feeling of simply watching what is arising without any "doing". Events spontaneously self liberate within the flow. Growth is natural and uncomplicated.
This flow eventually reaches a peak called "suspended breath" or, what the Hindus (the followers of Santana Dharma) call "Nirvakalpa Samadhi". This is where the breathing spontaneously stops, not because any emotion is being repressed, but because we have stored massive amounts of prana in our bodies and have superoxygenated our bloodstream. With suspended breathing, we can pause our breathing and go into the eternal. We are still in our bodies, but are no longer subject to the flow of change. The breath stops without any strain and can last for five minutes or more. While Nirvakalpa Samadhi has been reached by Hindu masters through much will power and concentration within a sadhana or meditation method, it can be more easily achieved through riding, in trust and surrender, the grace and blessing of life. It is both a deeper and easier than the path of will power and effort alone, since the will must still eventually surrender into Divine Grace to enter into oneness. It is also easier to "come out of eternity" through riding the breath, since the grace of life will bring us into and out of eternity through its own power and wisdom.
What is discovered within the eternal is the presence of being, who and what we actually are. We are awareness abiding in awareness as awareness. This radiant energy is the experiencer of every event of all our lives. When we rest here in this energy, we will first feel that radiant awareness is like clear empty space which allows all events to happen, then it will feel like a luminous space, and then it will feel like a warm presence. Here we are very far beyond the grip of sorrow and do not have to ever suffer again, unless we get hooked into an event through a sensory experience stimulating a latent samskara. We can learn that these hook ins are gifts to that show us something we can let go of and thereby deepen our surrender to and trust in life. Ideally, we learn how to "be" and allow the karma wave to arise, change, abide, and pass away. We learn how to breathe through everything.
From a parallel Facebook entry:
ReplyDeleteCarol Hoyt: love it william...thank you so much for all the goodness....
From a parallel Facebook entry:
ReplyDeleteEncarnacion Perez Jr Exhaling a lot these days.
From a parallel Facebook entry:
ReplyDeleteTimothy Stetz Thanks again Willam for the reminder
According to the Sufis, the two meditation methods that have liberated the most number of human beings have been breathing methods and chanting mantras. According to the Kriya Yoga tradition, conscious breathing is mantra chanting. Every conscious breath has its devotional sound and the language of its chanting is more primordial than any language than any culture on Earth has ever used.
ReplyDeleteThe name for God that Jesus used was "Abwoon". It is in Aramaic for the two genders, male and female, in cosmic and sacred form, conjoined devotional, sexual, and loving embrace and birthing the entire universe physically, emotional, mentally, and spiritually. It is also a breath mantra with "ah" whisper chanted on the inhale and "bwoon" whisper chanted on the exhale.
The name for God that Mohamend used was "Allah". It is a breath mantra deeply associated with total surrender into the One Power that regulates all events within the universe. The root "lah", in a language more ancient than Arabic, is a primal thought which means both "creativity" and "sexual ecstasy". As a breath mantra, "ah" is whisper chanted on the inhale and "lah" is whisper chanted on the exhale.
At the heart of the Kalachakra teachings of Tibetan Buddhism is a two syllable mantra "Evam" which is also a breath mantra. The Kalachakra teachings are about a symbolic prophecy of a 500 year process that ends in global peace. In the inner sanctum of the Kalachakra temple, at the heart of the Kalachakra mandala, are two cosmic beings, one male and one female, with many arms, in loving, sexual, and ecstatic embrace. As a breath mantra, "eh" is whispher chanted on the inhale and "vam" is whisper chanted on the exhale.
In Hindu spirituality, Santana Dharma, the breath mantra is "Hamsa" or "Soham" with "Ham" whisper chanted on the inhale and "Sah" whisper chanted on the exhale. This mantra is often mentally chanted when a shaktipat guru raises the kundalini up the spine for a devotee. Kundalini energy is both the energy that creates the cosmos and the energy that always arises when a male and female are in sexual, loving, and devotional embrace.
The mantra that I received in dreamtime from Amida Buddha is "Om Namo Amida Buddha Hreeh", a call to the Buddha of love and light to be blessed and healed, even to the point of healing all karma, all aging, and all death. The breath form of this mantra "Ah Hreeh" with "Ah" whisper chanted on the inhale and "Hreeh" whisper chanted on the exhale. "Ah" is the first syllable of Amida Buddha and symbolizes the primordial luminous infinite field of love and light that we always swim in. "Hreeh" is the seed syallable of Pandaravasini, the Queen of Fire, the shakti female dakini of the fire element whose tingling energy awakens during breathing and burns away all karma. Mandarava is considered to have been an incarnation of her wisdom energy on Earth just as her consort Padmasambhava is an incarnation of Amida Buddha. This eternal couple is rumored to still exist upon the Earth in physical bodies that have transformed into light bodies. Their abode is Copper Mountain.
ReplyDeleteEach mantra shapes the breathing so that it becomes deeper and fuller. The word "mantra" comes from a root which means "to protect the mind". All the karmas that produce all our sorrows are started by clinging thoughts, negative thoughts, and delusional thoughts. We are constantly thinking thoughts like these and thereby producing an insane world where people hurt each other, fight each other, and kill each other, violate precepts that are designed only to create a peaceful, healthy, and happy life (which in turn is based on a simple intuition on how to live in love and harmony with all sentient beings), and experience a struggle to survive rather than simply live in abundant world where there is enough for every body. We are unconsciously and constantly subvocalizing these karma based thoughts. By whisper chanting, by feeling these syllables vibrate within the sound of the natural flow of the breath, by focusing our thinking mind on mentally making these sounds in our breathing, we guard our minds from thinking karma producing thoughts and instead allow the grace of life to manifest our lives.
Jesus called his form of prayer, this path of breathing mantra, "the Holy Breath". This was later translated as "Holy Spirit" and became a noun and person of the Trinity instead of a method of breathing and self liberation. Jesus kept his method of prayer secret and no teaching really exists about it in the New Testament. But his disciples noticed that Jesus was praying differently than they were taught to pray within their exoteric religious upbringing. The coming of the Kingdom of "the Son of Man" (the next evolution of humankind) has to do with this kind of breathing prayer. Jesus demonstrates this by going to a mountain to pray and turning his physical body into a light body. Moses and Elijah appear (those within the Jewish tradition who had also attained to a light body, Moses by Egyptian alchemy and Elijah by Merkabah). In the Eastern Orthodox tradition, Saint Seraphim used Hesychastic breathing prayer to also attain to a light body.
ReplyDeleteYeshe Tsogyal, an advanced dakini who attained a light body through the teachings of Padmasambhava, delivered a terma to Earth that talked about repeating the mantra "Om Ah Hum Vajra Guru Padme Siddhi Hum". If the mantra is chanted 1,000,000 times, then one is enlightened and liberated. If the mantra is chanted 1,000,000,000, then the physical body turns into a light body. Each cycle of conscious connected breath is one repetition of a powerful mantra and brings one closer to this transformational crossing point. One million repetitions mutates us into homo telepathicus. One billion repetitions mutates us into homo holographicus. The first million require conscious intention to drive the process. The remaining chants (breath cycles) have each and every breath count. All resistance to our evolution eventually ends from within us and life itself births us. The practice does need the support of a conscious, pure, and loving lifestyle. If addictions exist they can be dissolved through conscious connected breathing. When the breathing mantra is done even in dreams, then it starts to deeply cleanse the subconscious mind.
William Bagley PS This is the last sharing on FB about conscious breathing (at least for now). I have duplicate posted these entries on my blog at amritayana.blogspot.com at the blog entry entitled "Every exhale is letting go". Thanking everyone for the responses that were shared. I feel honored.
ReplyDeleteFrom a parallel Facebook entry:
ReplyDeleteSusan Grace: Did you study with Neil Douglas Klotz?
From a parallel Facebook entry:
ReplyDeleteWilliam Bagley: @Susan, I did study a lot of Neil Douglas Klotz, Lamsa, Jeremias, Heschel, Buber, Gurdjieff, E. J. Gold, Idries Shah, and other sources. Klotz did not fully touch the breathing, though, the Vigyana Bhairava Tantra, Guatama Buddha, Rebirth...ing, Vivation, Sufi Sam, Rajneesh (Osho), Kriya Yoga, Tibetan Tumo, Vajra Yogini, Tara (as Machig Labron), Shantideva, Prajna Shakti, Lady Prajna Parmita, Padmasambhava, Tsele Natsok Rangdrol, Saganah Rakira, Sohra, and Etabah were more important teachers concerning the breath. Klotz was more about "body prayer" which is very wonderful as far as it goes. I would consider Rebirthing breathing and Breath of Fire combined with the visualizations of Tibetan Tumo and the breath mantra related to Amida Buddha to be very powerful. Vajra Yogini and Rakira taught me the deepest parts of the breath. In terms of human teachers, Leonard Orr and Jim Leonard, of Rebirthing and Vivation respectively, taught me a lot. Klotz did some important missing pieces about the Aramaic New Testament. Studying the NT in the original Greek/Aramaic via Jeremias helped a lot too.
From a parallel Facebook entry:
ReplyDeleteSusan Grace: gracias for the info ♥
There is a subtle breathing path that Buddha had taught, which involves no doing at all, just awareness.
ReplyDeleteYou watch the breathing and do not try to change what you see in any way. You let it change spontaneously any way it wants to change. If you are sensitive, you will notice that the ego is always struggling to breathe, struggling to survive, always anxious and tense, resisting one thought/emotion/sensation, clinging to another, grieving over some loss, angry about something being around us or someone invalidating us or violating us, or afraid someone is going to do something to us and already guarding, or already holding the breath to hide from it, or fantasizing going after someone or something for fulfillment. You just notice, notice, notice all this. The breathing actually gets thinner and thinner and goes to zero. The ego then panics and deliberately tries to breathe, struggles to live. You see "self clinging" the root of all sorrow appear. If you let this go, by simply continuing to "do nothing", then the small self vanishes and something immense/eternal takes its place. As long as you do not "think" you get to stay there.
ReplyDeleteSimply being aware, noticing the inbreath and the outbreath, smoothly letting the breathing flow from inbreath to outbreath and from outbreath to inbreath, staying aware, aware, aware, without the intervention of thought, without analytical thinking, without trying to change what is, without thought imposing an agenda on what is seen, a process of "unwinding" happens.
ReplyDeleteWe return back to the beginning, to our original nature, united with luminousity, with love, creativity, and wisdom, simply, innately, and peacefully feeling the purpose of life, finding that simply living is enough, learning to love all sentient beings deeper and more fully each day. Serving each other so that survival, healing, growth, and celebration arise in human and animal experience.
All the layers of effort and reaction dissolve in this unwinding, repressed emotions surface and then are seen as efforts and choices we have made to feel a certain way, and they, too, complete and dissolve, with one surfacing after another happening until "kenosis" is complete, until we are empty of everything that we accumulated and stored in the subconscious mind, realizing that what we had in the beginning, when birthed from luminousity as individual beings, was enough.
The last part of this unwinding is the sensation of "I" which is a mental construction. It is formed through how we got a name from the outside, from social experience, from reflections from friends, enemies, and family, from schools, and even from how we interpret our experience being in a human body, how we identify with the biological impulses and reactions of the body, and what it feels like to be inside human skin, and all the sensations of pleasure and pain that the body gives us. The thought of "I" links all the accumulated conditioned thoughts together and generates a feeling of separation and loneliness. It is the result of how thought itself conditions us and forms how we feel about ourselves. Thought structures experience through a subject/object duality, creating a standing apart feeling of "I" and "world", with loneliness felt inside as a result, the feeling of being abandoned by life, that makes Jesus cry out "my god, my god, why have you abandoned me?", a deep cry that is inside us all and which makes us reach out to cling to others, to hold them, possess them and keep them in our lives, and which makes us mourn losing them when they are gone from our experience, and which makes us crave connection to replace the connections lost through time.
When this subtle grip of thought is released, the feeling of "I" dissolves and we return to a deeper identity grounded in luminousity and radiance, united back with life itself, merged with the living intelligence of the Dharmakaya that is infused with love, creativity, and wisdom. It is not a personal energy like a being, entity, god, or goddess, and it is not impersonal like a rock or an abstraction, it feels warm, loving, caring, creative, and wise. It permeates everything everywhere. All forms emerge from this energy, abide always in this energy, have no existence apart from this energy, and dissolve back into this energy when they disappear from the world of form. It connects everything within a web of interdependence with love itself uniting all the seeming fragments into a wholeness that we all live within. The law of karma, cause and effect, is only one aspect or function of this energy presence, as is the law of grace which can free us from the binding energy of past choices and events. This energy wishes that all beings be free, be happy, be fulfilled, be whole and complete, and simply relaxing into the flow of this energy we are carried to this place. We need only to trust the process. Lao Tzu said, "The path of return is the way forward". T.S. Elliot said, "To return back to the beginning and to know the place for the first time."
Tonglen, in its simplest form, is visualizing all the sorrow of the world as dark clouds of energy, breathing these dark clouds in, having our heart naturally transmute this energy into compassion, appreciation, gratitude, and then exhaling this energy back as bright light back into the world.
ReplyDeleteWhen we do this, the process of unwinding happens a little faster and we arrive at peace more quickly and easily. This is because such breathing is the reverse of the logic of the conventional ego that we normally think and feel that we are (and which we are objectively not). We are normally on guard, constantly shielding ourselves from the negative energies that surround us, resisting those energies, closing down our heart when they are around, and feeling slightly tense around those energies.
ReplyDeleteWhen we open our heart wide and willingly take on those energies, not reluctantly when they breakthrough our defenses, but compassionately because we emphasize with the mass of sorrow that is around us and wish to alleviate the sorrows that surround us by breathing them in, transmuting them, and breathing them out, then our guarded and vulnerable heart becomes an open mahasattva heart, filled with karuna (sympathetic compassion), and in a single intentional moment changes from what it was before. We return to our more natural compassion and return back to our mahasattva enlightened nature.
Tonglen breathing does immediately uplift and heal the energies of the Earth. It is not a mere projection of a better attitude toward the world. While it does not force the world to change, because love is nonviolent, always honors our free choice, and only enters us and changes us to the degree we drop our ego control and allow it to heal us, tonglen lightens the sorrow that is around us. It weaves new wholesome energies into the web of interdependence that we all live within, gently invites those around us to become a higher being than they have manifested in the past. Love invites love to be birthed in all it touches.
ReplyDeleteAlthough it may not seem to do much immediately within a conventional perception of what is happening in the world, it does work immediately, gently, and powerfully to uplift and heal the world, economically, politically, physically, socially, psychologically, spiritually, biologically, and objectively. Rather than be tense and upset by the endless news reports that flow through our media, feel that the media is part of the social nervous system of our world, sending pain signals back to the collective consciousness, use it to breathe in all the dark energy that it allows you to see, feel your heart transmute it, and breathe out compassion as actual energy back into those situations. It sometimes changes those situations in rapid and surprising ways. It is easier to even see those changes, because you join the power of compassion and love that is changing the world and can see what love is doing from within love itself. Conventional perception is really subtle frozen mental pictures of the world that we hold in our minds about ourselves and others which are really out of date the moment that we make them and usually grip us until we displace them with other pictures which in turn also become out of date the moment they are made. When love operates those pictures are more loosely held and morph every moment within a subtle omniscience that is within our mahasattva nature. When love is present, these pictures, being looser, gently release their grip inside our own minds, and each release in turn also heals us. As we heal, the world also heals, since it sets in motion new causes within the web of interdependence. The normal pattern of pictures reacting to pictures is gently disrupted and opens up all interactions to change around us, with love inviting love forward from everyone we meet. Try this in crowded grocery stores during the strange frenzies of the holiday season and notice what happens. Try this when you are watching the news, especially on the border between North Korea and South Korea. Do not wait for the political and governmental machinery of this world to solve these problems with its cruder tools of explosive weapons and political manipulations. The breathing community is the future government of the world and without leaders, except love itself, we can gently interlock with each other as one giant telepathic breathing organism, and gently unite with all those brothers and sisters still lost in the dramas and politics of the separated selves.
Wishing to invite anyone, here and now, to join a "breathing community" to heal ourselves, each other, and the world. First linking through the third eye chakra and then doing Tonglen breathing in the heart.
ReplyDeleteIf you wish this, place attention at the third eye, the space between the eyebrows and slightly above, hold the intention of joining the mahasangha, the community of light beings and the awakening beings who exist in this world, the future species, homo telepathicus, that is emerging on this world. Feel as if your breath energy, on exhale, is pouring into this chakra and energizing this intention, linking you to the collective energy of the mahasangha. As you inhale, feel like you are also breathing in light/energy/wisdom into the crown chakra, the soft spot at the top of the head. Visualize and feel this energy flowing into the heart chakra and radiate into our world. Feel as as if you are a cell with a vast living organism, the Corpus Christi, the Mahasangha, the Ekklesia, the communion of saints. Feel as if you are breathing is synchronizing with the pulsating macroheart of this organism and even the magnetic pulsation of the Earth. Once you feel synchronized, then do the Tonglen breathing with the feeling that you are not ever alone that the Mahasangha is always with you. Feel the wish within this organism to totally heal this world, to end every sorrow, to heal every wound, to bring peace to everyone, and to make life flourish on this world.
ReplyDeleteIn linking this way, feeling this organism, feeling yourself as a part of this organism, you will feel the faith that on this world, everything will turn out okay and everything shall be well, that once a Buddha appears on a world, turns the wheel of the Dharma, and leaves behind a fully established sangha of awakening and awakened beings, then such a world will inevitably become liberated, and this world has had more than just one fully liberated being teach the dharma. Thousands of liberated beings have appeared on this world, Shiva, Tara, Buddha, Jesus, Padmasambhava, Mandarava, Yeshe Tsogyal, Machig Labron, Ma Tantra Essena, Mary Magdalene, Babaji, Lao Tzu, Rabia, Saint Teresa of Avila, Dharmakara, Dipankara, Bodhidharma, Mataji, and so many others, each being sufficient by himself or herself to set in motion the process of completely liberating this world. When we join with their energy, take our place in the vast organism of light, we link with its healing power, radiate energy into our world, and are blessed.
ReplyDeleteWhen breathing in the sorrow of this world, transmuting it, and radiating back compassion, light, and peace, within this breathing community, we immediately enter a living oneness in love and feel at home where ever we are.
From a parallel entry on Facebook:
ReplyDeleteSusan Grace: Breathing as One.
From parallel entry on Facebook:
ReplyDeleteCarol Hoyt: now you got it going on Will....online community of the first order....
From a parallel Facebook entry:
ReplyDeleteSusan Grace I don't use Tonglen as you describe it....I Am breathing with You as One causing an atmospheric radiation from Self(ves) that simply dissolves heavier frequencies with Love dust ♥ as aligned with Highest Evolutionary Collective Intention. I feel this transmutation is happening in a causal wave thereby holding the sphere of Gaia together through the journey. A harmonic ascendant flow of Love...as much Grace and Ease as possible.
From a parallel Facebook entry:
ReplyDelete@Susan, The method you describe sounds very good and really, on a bottom line level, almost the exactly same. Whenever love is invoked as real energy and radiated into our world it serves the healing and evolution of our world. I would r...ecommend experimenting at least a little with Tonglen, just to feel the power of the heart to rapidly transmute the dark clouds of energy. It is very good to know, from experience, that the heart has the power to do this. Very quickly, it starts to do this automatically, just by intention and in the surrounding field. Energies that used to make us cave in and fall into lesser states become a kind of food for love to flourish even more. At one point, when the heart is confident, it stands as itself in its fullness, becomes a healing presence, and then interconnects with a giant Heart which is always doing the same thing, then there is only need for a kind of remembrance that we do not have to cave in and can always "let our light shine". Thank you for being another part of my Self.
From a parallel Facebook entry:
ReplyDeleteSusan Grace: Beautiful William...We Are ♥
Always and everywhere being an agent of peace in whatever world and whatever place we happen to be. Walking amidst the chaos of the world and seeing instead synchronicity, that no meeting is accidental, that even someone passing by and exchanging a glance is a significant meeting, a chance to radiate compassion towards another sentient being.
ReplyDeleteFrom a parallel Facebook entry:
ReplyDeleteI love the post of yours which I saw today via Jeff Bossler. I always used to have the sense that every single moment, every single passing glance, is sacred in eternity. But I had forgotten that for awhile until your post reminded me today. Thank you. Terryl
From parallel Facebook entries:
ReplyDeleteCarol Hoyt: thats right!
Lynnet McKenzie: Thank you SO MUCH for sharing your love and enlightened wisdom. :)
Marion Millin: "seeing instead synchronicity"
Samer Farah: On a micro-level: Synchronicity for a musician is everything then we take that and expand it to the macro-level world. Kudos to you.
Andrea Malden: YES!* Thank You!*~ ♥
From a parallel Facebook entry:
ReplyDelete@Samer: I do feel/agree that music/sound/frequency has a deep secret about all this. As a language it can illuminate understanding and create a peaceful loving nonconceptual in the moment knowing about life. I do have some compositions on youtube channel Raku777 that you might enjoy in this context.
Wow! How inspiring! I am joining the conspiracy! Once I was being taught the rebirthing method in a hot tub with a snorkel. I had the suspension of breath. There is nothing I can say about that experience, until I took a breath again after an eternity and floated up to the surface rapidly and made waves. Afterwards, my guide told me that I was breath suspended for 15 minutes! I was surprised! I didn't know it was possible! Thank you for reminding me again to breath.
ReplyDeleteThank you for your thoughts Dannon. I had reached suspended breath, too, which I do feel is similar to Nirvakalpa Samadhi. There is a difference. The Rebirthing breathing seems to reach this shift in an easier and more graceful manner, and this is a great blessing. It is like the body gets so loaded with oxygen and prana that it does not need to breathe for a while. There is a feeling of eternity within this nonbreath. What I found interesting was how strainless it felt to be there, and how I was simply conscious and could even think if I wanted to. I could look at the room I was in and feel my body on the ground without disturbing this state. I got intuitively that it was 5 minutes for me which when you are very conscious and aware is a long time!
ReplyDelete