Beyond Stillness

Practices Workbook:

Exploring The Body as Consciousness

October 2000

2009 Revised Edition

Guided Practices are available in audio Mp3 format from the store:

http://www.dynamicstillness.com/store.php

Copyright © 2000 by Charles Ridley All rights reserved. No portion of this manuscript, except
for brief review, may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any
means — electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise — without the written
permission of the author.

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 Table of Contents

Table of Contents ................................................................................................................... 2

Chapter 1 WHAT AM I? ....................................................................................................... 3
Chapter 2 The Challenge: To Find Ground and Keep Center ............................................. 18
The I ........................................................................................................................................ 19
Chapter 3 Opening Your Heart as an Organ of Perception ................................................... 32
How to Strengthen the Ego .................................................................................................... 34
Heart Perception. Perceiving What Is, as it is: Realizing the Enfoldments of Consciousness
(see Stillness, Chapter 5 - 9): ................................................................................................... 35
Chapter 4 The Neutral and the Breath of Life ...................................................................... 55
The Power that Made the Body Heals the Body ..................................................................... 56
The Descending Current of the Breath of Life is Whole-body Felt Sense Awareness ........... 63
What Happens as I Relax into all of Myself as I am, and Leave Things as they are? ........... 65
How do these Deep Feelings Express? .................................................................................. 66
What Happens When I Relax into and Become these Core Feelings? ................................... 67
Relationships and the Neutral ............................................................................................... 70
Appendix .............................................................................................................................. 78
Esoteric Anatomy .................................................................................................................. 78
Anatomical Details of Awakening Your Whole-body Felt Sense .......................................... 81
Source of the Heartbeat ......................................................................................................... 83
Third Ventricle (third eye) Anatomy ..................................................................................... 84
Caduceus .............................................................................................................................. 87
Connection of the Brain Core to the Heart ............................................................................. 90
The Chakras, Positive and Negative Polarity, and Infusion of the Breath of Life .................. 95

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 Chapter 1 - WHAT AM I?

Our humanness expresses itself in a depth and tenderness of feeling

in the intersection of emptiness and form.

~John Welwood

The heart is that intersection where the named and the nameless meet, therefore, here
is where we experience both the infinite and the finite part of our being. This is the site of
nonseparate embodied feeling-witness consciousness, or so-called non-dual awareness.
To learn how to rest here in the heart, try this practice: Sit comfortably, straight yet
relaxed, close your eyes, and breathe slowly and deeply with your whole body as though it
were your lungs. After acclimating to whole-body breathing, bring your awareness into
your lower belly. Do this for a few moments until you experience your belly relax, and
you sense a spacious softening of your underbelly.

If you need support softening your belly, relax your awareness while you notice that
the belly is already filled with soft, radiant stillness: breathe from within the center of this
stillness. As you relax, notice how the space of stillness in your belly naturally softens
and expands from the central point from where your breath originates. Permit stillness to
radiate out in all the directions; if that feels difficult to you, start by breathing your
awareness into each direction, one at a time. Breathe with your whole body, yet also let
your belly expand from top and bottom; front and back; left and right; inside and out;
outside and in - while you breathe. Fill each direction, one at a time, with your awareness,
while the spacious, soft stillness grows from center outward. If you now experience an
open and soft, warm, radiant ‘honey belly,’ then, let your attention rise from the belly up
to behind your eyes.

Sense your awareness resting behind your eyes, and from here, relax the outward
directed current of your awareness, while you navigate your attention back along the optic
nerve to the optic chiasm - behind and between your eyebrows - in the space where the
falx, tentorium, and the anterior dural girdle converge near lamina terminalis. This is just
above the pituitary gland, at the bridge of the bird’s beak -- the front wall of third

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ventricle. Sit here for a few minutes; meanwhile, continue to acclimate to your soft
spacious honey belly.

Relax any contractions, or grip, you have on your awareness, and notice how radiant
stillness slowly fills your field of perception, this area, between and behind the eyebrows.
Allow stillness to soften and radiate from within the center outward in each direction, just
like you did with your belly. After a few minutes of being aware of this expanded soft
stillness, imagine that all of the structures of your head - the bones, membranes, brain,
and the cerebrospinal fluid - are like a sponge that floats in, and soaks up, stillness. Let
each layer breathe in and sponge up the radiance of this soft stillness. Spend a few
moments acclimating to your head stillness, and to your honey belly.

Relax. Let your head awareness naturally sink into your heart. Feel your awareness,
as soft radiant stillness, slowly descend into the vast ocean of your heart. Sit here, in your
heart space, while you continue to breathe with your whole body slowly, deeply, softly.
And as you do so, continue to allow the stillness that is here to fill your field of awareness
- your perceptual field - which now includes a soft honey belly, a soft, porous head,
soaking in radiant stillness, all of which is submerged in the limitless ocean of your heart.

As you rest within your heart space, allow your focus, or any holding on, to relax, to
open, to soften, and expand with each whole-body breath. If you need support with this,
imagine that within your heart is an infinitely small sphere - a point - and let this
infinitely small point naturally radiate and expand outward in all directions, slowly, just
like you did earlier in the belly, and continue breathing in and soaking up radiant stillness.
Your radiant heart sphere will organically grow ever larger all by itself, without you
having to do anything except relax and let it go. Radiance will fill your heart, and then
slowly radiate beyond the heart to fill your chest, and from the chest stillness fills the
space in your torso, then your whole body becomes infused. Then, if you let it stillness
will radiate beyond your body and fill the room, your house, the neighborhood, town,
state, country, the planet, the sky, the solar system, all the way to infinity - try to permit
your heart to radiate beyond your concept of the known - past infinity. Let your

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awareness disappear over the edge of the known, over the horizon: let go, and rest in what
feels like a free-fall expansion into infinite stillness.

Relax every effort, even the trying to relax, and let the act of awareness itself, as
stillness, to be what senses for you. It helps to suspend your thoughts, your desire to
understand the process, or your need to name anything that you are sensing. With your
awareness - that which is right now aware of this process - begin to sense bodily, as a
feeling-witness, whatever arises: Be it your thoughts, your feelings, or the sensations in
your body. Sense all of this from the space of stillness within your body, as if stillness
inside your whole body is a sense organ, an organ of awareness, and a feeling-witness. Do
not let thinking take over; rather, sense in a more global fashion from within the whole
space of your body, from below the neck, perhaps centered in the heart. Continue to let
your whole body soften, and especially be mindful of any place that feels compressed or
tight. Bring awareness to any tense areas, and notice how that, upon contact with your
feeling awareness, the tension will naturally relax, become porous, fluid, and will feel
cradled by love while it is being permeated with your awareness - your sensing awareness
that is the stillness within your body. Here you bodily discover that whatever the presence
of stillness as your awareness touches, it bestows relaxation, and a felt sense of being
loved. If you need support bodily relaxing in this manner, imagine that your whole body
is a sponge: Allow your whole body to soak up the radiant stillness that emanates from
within your vast heart; when you do this, your body may feel like it is floating in an
radiant ocean of stillness.

Let yourself acclimate to this body-felt sense for a while. Notice that your awareness
- as the inherent presence of stillness in your body - can simultaneously sense, relax, and
love unconditionally whatever it touches with its presence. Take the time you need to
bodily acclimate to the wisdom of your body.

When you are ready to proceed, try this:

With the appropriate sincerity and reverence that an inquiry into your own mystery
merits, ask yourself this question (from within the presence of stillness in your heart):

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 “What am I?”

Do not answer this question with a thought or a feeling.

Do not search for an answer.

Sit with this question, and feelingly sense, as the stillness of your heart that fills your
whole body and radiates to infinity: Just notice what thoughts arise, what feelings emerge,
and be aware of any grasping, or searching for the answer. Let whatever arises just be
here without any desire to do anything other than sense from within your whole-body felt-
sense awareness. If you sense your mind desperately searching for the answer to “What
am I?” Tell the truth:

“I do not know.”

Completely let go of having to know, or, of grasping for any answer. Yet, continue
to sense. And while you relax your desire to look for any answer, permit the presence of
the mystery of what you are to naturally arise and permeate your awareness without
having to know what it is. See if you can totally relax any desire to search for an answer,
and simply sit in not knowing what you are - from within your whole-body felt sense
awareness. Drop into the ocean of stillness and become this awareness of not knowing
that you presently experience. Open, let go, relax, and be submerged in the insecurity of
not knowing. Rest in this until you acclimate to this new sense of not knowing, and to the
insecurity that goes with it. Take the time to bodily acclimate to this felt sense.

When you are ready, allow your open, soft, fluid awareness - as the presence of
stillness - to sink from your heart to your lower pelvic floor. “Slide down the midline,”
into your pelvis. And while your awareness slides down the midline, allow any fear, or
resistance to this process to just be here. Continue to relax, soften, permit, and remain
open to any outcome during your slide down you midline, into your root stillness.

Feeling root stillness can be very daunting to the ego, at first. Fear may arise; you
feel irritation; or, you may have thoughts that your consciousness will be extinguished;

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you may feel like you are about to die; you may experience deep primal emotions - the
feeling of total aloneness, rage, grief, terror, hatred, insatiable longing, deep desire, or
brokenness - yet remain open to feeling the intensity of all of the thoughts, all of the
feelings - the fear, the doubt, and antipathy. If it is fear that arises, for example, permit
yourself to be open to letting the intensity of the fear just be here, soak in it, and embrace
it. Let your fear in all of its intensity just be here - as it is.

Continue to sink into this root stillness as you descend along your midline - into your
pelvis. This is what is known in Zen as the “little death.” The deeper that you permit and
feelingly embrace the intensity your uncomfortable feelings, the sooner the intensity
softens. Then, you discover that under your intense, often unbearable feelings is a place
that is totally relaxed and still, in which you can fully permit and embrace these intense
and often frightening feelings: you can let it be - as it is

Once you completely surrender any control, and permit yourself to drop into your
root stillness, your feeling awareness may naturally sink into dark powerful root stillness.
Sometimes stillness consolidates your awareness to a point with such density and
intensity that your idea that you are exclusively a separate self is extinguished. Then, pure
awareness concentrates and implodes inwardly through the point of stillness and spills
infinitely out, which dissolves any boundaries of separateness: you perceptually unite
with the Whole. Allow the root stillness to ignite and awaken your whole-body felt sense
awareness of the All that Is.

Soak in your vastly expanded awareness for a while, and permit the imploded
infinite stillness to infuse and utterly permeate your entire body, which floats in the
infinite ocean of wholeness. The more you relax, the more thoroughly you encounter
stillness that is so deep that it takes over all functions of your thinking mind, of your
feeling heart, and of your restless sensing body - all is stilled - even your breathing:
Stillness breathes you. Some have characterized the quality of this sense of root stillness
as elemental; it feels as though you are standing on top of an earthquake, or on a volcano
that is about to erupt. You sense a powerful trembling out of the depths, from deep within

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a hidden primordial stillness. Even though this stillness contains no sounds, no colors, no
things - no perceivable phenomena - there is a tremendous power here, and you feel that
your whole being is definitely being utterly rearranged, or reconfigured, to align and
synchronize with this power. You cannot see this, yet, all the same, you know without
any doubt that it is happening. This can be uncomfortable, so give yourself time to bodily
acclimate here to this Sacred Tremor.

In time, when you have settled into root stillness it may begin to spontaneously
ascend up your midline, as though it is a dense rod of stillness; meanwhile, you feel that
stillness breathes you. Permit it to breathe you, and let this rod of stillness rise as you
relax all resistance to its upward movement. Then, stillness will literally rise up your
midline like a powerful growing root: Stillness will effortlessly pass through and soften
any of the hardened places in your pelvis, your belly, your solar plexus, and then it will
enter into the core of your heart. Here stillness will open your heart and soften it while
you reconnect to your young innocent tenderness that you remembered having as a small
child. Your innocent, tender heart will gradually soften into a deep quiet. You will
remember your heart’s softness, its precious vulnerability, and the sweet innocence that
you continually dwelt in before all of your hurts closed these tender places down. It may
require some time for you to reacquaint yourself with the voice of your heart. Please take
all the time that you need here: feeling this tenderness is the most important part of
becoming whole.

When you feel ready, permit the root stillness to continue its rise up your midline and
it will fill the mind, and create a “zone of silence” in the thinking mind. Thoughts and
feelings will continue to arise as before, but they now emerge out of this zone of silence.
Thoughts now feel much like a movie that projects on a screen: you witness your
thoughts, feelings, and sensations as they emerge from this screen of stillness, and you
can choose to engage them, or not. You can give yourself up to them, or simply be aware
of them, as they naturally arise out of stillness, and then they settle back and disappear in
stillness. You can witness, both as an observer and, at the same time, you can feelingly
participate in your thoughts, feelings, and sensations.

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 You discover the effect that conditioning has had on your awareness, and you see
precisely how resisting, denying, or avoiding feeling any of your conditioning, or
unwanted parts, is precisely what creates the suffering in your life. You become very
clear that you are totally loved unconditionally, just as you are, without having to fix
anything (We will discuss this further in chapter 4).

So, once root stillness soaks in, and begins to fully permeate and infuse your whole-
body felt sense awareness, and you have acclimated to it, it is time to “let the bottom drop
out of your feet.” This is called in Zen the “big death,” or the large abyss. Your exclusive
identity as an ego - that thinks it is a separate limited self - recedes, and is replaced by an
awareness that is both finite and infinite. You must be willing, and have the courage, to
literally free yourself from your exclusive identification with your separate individual ego
- and allow the presence of stillness to become the ground of your awareness. Literally, as
unlimited aware stillness that permeates and contains a limited sense of a self, and, out of
which all phenomena is an expression. Here, there is no separateness; there is only “That”
of which you are a singular expression.

This moment essentially impels you sink into the root stillness so deeply that your
awareness feels like it is descending down an overwhelmingly powerful dark funnel that
draws you down into a heaviness, a density, or a powerful field of gravity that sends you
into a free-fall down into a black, dense, bottomless, ever-expansive, infinite, and silent
no-thing-ness, that paradoxically contains everything. The challenge here is to allow this
to happen without any resistance - even while terror completely pervades your ego - and
while your exclusive separate sense of self-consciousness is convinced that it is being
extinguished. It is precisely because the ego experiences chaos, disorientation, confusion,
and a loss of its identity here, that it reacts with terror, doubt, and antipathy. So, naturally,
it will intensely protest in opposition to this moment. If you permit these protests - just let
them be as they are - they become the actual firewood that fuels the opportunity for
greater stability of this presence of stillness as awareness as such - as unlimited spacious
stillness that is aware, that sees, and lovingly embraces everything as itself, and as it is.

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 This is known as primordial awareness, or the unwavering presence of stillness, and
as it marries matter - as your whole body - then the infinite and finite become one.

Here are only a few of the ego’s endless arguments at this threshold:

“What if I go crazy?” Relax and permit it.

“What if I end up catatonic?” Relax and permit it.

“What if I end up eternally lost in the abyss of nothingness?” Relax and permit it.

“What if I am extinguished?” Relax and permit it.

“What if I never come back?” Relax and permit it.

“What if all this spiritual stuff is a big lie?” Relax and permit it.

“What if I die?” Relax and permit it.

“What if I can’t function any more, and I fail to attain my goals?”

Relax and permit it.

“What if there really is absolutely nothing, and I become that, forever?”

Relax and permit it.

“What if I fly into thousands of pieces never to glue myself back?”

Relax and permit it.

“What if I end up totally alone forever?” Relax and permit it.

“What if I am forever engulfed by this terror I feel?” Relax and permit it.

“What if this primal rage takes over and I become it?” Relax and permit it.

“What if…

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 Want to know something? The protests will never end, because it is a reflex, an
automatic reaction that occurs naturally whenever the ego feels its sovereignty threatened.

Relaxing into and feeling the intensity of the ego’s noisy protest can actually help
you drop deeper into stillness, if you relax and let it just be here.

In fact, if you embrace and welcome each protest, and feel it in all of its intensity,
then, each newly permitted protest will further stabilize and increase the awakening of
your non-separate whole-body felt sense. The more you relax into and embrace the tonal
intensity of any irritation, discomfort, or unwanted feeling, the more that non-dual
awakening can bodily stabilize in you, as you. This stability is precisely facilitated by not
arguing with the argument, because now you understand that it is natural to feel core
irritation as a fact of the paradox that arises out of the marriage between the ego, as a
finite personality, and infinite being. Resting in this dynamic tension of opposites is what
unfixates the personality, and releases your awareness from your ego’s clinging tendency
to being separate: stillness frees you from the tyranny of a grasping ego as sense of a
separate self that needs to know and to control life. In fact, the sense of a separate self, the
ego, is an argument that life is not whole.

This point is crucial to understand and practice: Do not set up another argument over
and against one that already exists automatically out of your conditioning - do not argue
with the argument. Remember, the argument of the ego against wholeness is natural; that
is its job. The function of the conditioned mind is to argue against what is. Can you see
the futility of arguing with a natural arising? Do you argue with nature? For instance, do
you argue that the sun rises and sets everyday? (OK, I’ll admit it.)

No matter what its strategy, or how convincing a story your mind concocts, or with
what clothing your feelings dress those thoughts up in, you are challenged to include all
of it in this oceanic presence of stillness. In other words, whatever story your ego presents
as an argument against what is happening this moment, allow precisely that story into the
deepest core of stillness within your being and embrace it fully - and let it just be here as
it is. Become fully present and open to the intensity of the protesting thoughts, feelings,

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sensations, and strategies. In fact, the greater the intensity of the protest, the deeper and
more stable your bodily awakening can be, if you can let go of trying to make any of the
protests different than what it is, while you are immersed in the intensity. This is what I
meant earlier when I said that relaxing into the ego’s protests is the firewood for
stabilizing awareness as the unwavering presence of stillness in your bodymind.

Instead of acquiescing to the fear naturally arising out of the conditioned, egoic,
strategizing mind, let your guide be your longing and your ardent desire to rest in the
truth of what you are, with all of the trust and courage you can muster - allow the wisdom
of your whole-body felt sense, the prajnaparamita, to guide you. Once you allow the
“bottom to drop out,” your awareness will know itself as infinite stillness, as unwavering
silence infused with awareness, and as a finite bodymind - you become an ineffable
mystery that is not knowable. This realization renders all phenomena of the entire created
universe transparent. You arrive at the placeless place, inside the truth of what you are.
You know that stillness is nothing, absolutely nothing - like space - and yet it is also
everything, it is full, potent, and, it is neither. Yet, this nothing is more delicate and
refined than space; it is fully potent space that is aware, sensitive, and unconditionally
loving. Out of this stillness of nothing, there arises everything: All matter, all expressions,
all movements, all thoughts, all feelings, all relatedness, and intimacy with all
phenomena. This is intimacy: you are inside, and an integral part of, creation in the
making that creates everything - out of nothing. This is literal, not metaphysical. What’s
more, after the bottom drops out from under your feet, you know, without any doubt, that
you are also that nameless, timeless, unknowable, infinite, dynamic stillness. No one can
convince you otherwise.

When your awareness expands beyond its exclusive identification with the
bodymind, the ego relaxes as the primary organ of perception, and it gradually
relinquishes control. Eventually, ego becomes transparent, and your perception becomes a
primitive, whole-body primordial awareness, which is an unknowable mystery that has
survived for millions, perhaps billions of years. You discover that everything is pervaded
by this same mysterious awareness that you are.

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 Your bodymind, as separate sense of self, is now contained within and as this
awareness - as this awareness that is whole. Before this moment, your mind literally
captured and contained a minuscule portion of this awareness, like a prisoner, and called
it ‘I.’ Your awareness was held tightly within the confines of a separate body, with a
separate thinking mind that is intent on naming and knowing everything. Once awareness
is captivated by the stories of the mind, and then dressed up in the clothing of feelings and
sensations that accompany those stories, all of your awareness is lulled to sleep through
its exclusive self-identification. We identify with the names and stories and call them
reality, or truth, when, actually, it is a relative truth, a creation of the mind’s conditioning
that is usually based on past experiences, or a projection into the future.

When your awareness awakens out of the spell of the ego’s conditioning, you realize
how conditioning operates without the blinders of self-referencing. It goes something like
this: Vast tonal pulses arise out of the periphery of limitless stillness. In new physics all
phenomena arises out of what is called the 'event horizon'. Therefore, any phenomenon
that is perceived is initially sensed as a current, or a wave of streaming energy, a thought,
a bodily sensation, or a perception - and the ego immediately and automatically captures
it - like a photograph, freezes it, and then the mind names the event. The mind wraps
itself around this event without a name by placing a name on it. From the named, a story
develops about it. So now, we have a name, and then a story evolves about it, and feelings
develop in relation to the story. Now, we believe that the story with its feelings to be the
event, when, originally, it was simply an energetic expression that has no name - it just is.
The name and the story are accepted by the ego to be the reality, or truth, and we act as
though the thought and the feeling is the event - reality: the name and story replace
become what is.

Even though the expression of reality is a nameless event, the thinking mind captures
it with a name, and places a story on it, and dresses it in the clothing of feelings that are
based on the mind’s experience of the past, or a projection into the future - this is our
habitual way of relating to any phenomenon arising in our awareness. This thought-
feeling process is automatic and unconscious, often having little to do with the tonality of

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what actually arises, rather, it is based on our conditioning.

An example of how this reflex, automatic knee jerk, conditioning captures any
phenomenon that arises, here’s what happened to me at the hot springs: I was sitting in
the sauna, indulging in my own peaceful enjoyment, when outside the sauna a small dog
began yapping. My unconscious conditioning snapped into an immediate antipathy
toward the high-pitched barking sound (notice how the name, the story, and the feeling
evolves): “How dare that little rat-dog bark and disturb my peace.” Notice how a more
charged story develops around my irritation: I imagine, joyfully, that the little dog is
being barbecued inside the sauna’s wood burning stove to shut it up. However, once I
caught my automatic irritation, and my judgment of it -- the story that the dog had no
right to disturb ‘my’ peaceful experience, and, after I finally relaxed into my irritation
about the barking, the noise became just barking. I then relaxed into my other automatic
responses, until gradually, I was no longer fixated on my ego’s reflexes, and I could
resume my peaceful sweat. If I had gone along with the story that my ego concocted my
irritation would have snowballed, thus leaving me too uptight to enjoy my sauna.

Later, (wouldn’t you know it?) the owners let the dog into the sauna. The dog gently
wined when it wanted to leave the sauna, just like a person would, and it came and went,
and apparently enjoyed the sauna with us. So this is an example of how conditioning
works - the ego, as the separate sense of self, is by definition self-centered. It is unable to
see the reality of life stripped of its self-serving lens, as it is. Rather I want life, or another
person, to be the way I want, and ego is unable to let life or another person be what it is.
This is natural.

After allowing the bottom to drop out into root stillness you experience phenomenon
arise and disappear, as it is, and, you see what the ego does with it also. You accept that
both the infinite and the infinitesimal are here as an inherent aspect of the wholeness.
What arises has no name, or story. It is simply an expression of life out of stillness - as it
is - and that is all. There is no need to know anything about it because, essentially, it is a
mystery that is unknowable. However, all phenomena emit tone, which you do receive as

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whole-body felt sensations that can guide you in life. Therefore, it is in this way that life
speaks to you silently, without thought or words, through tone.

When you let the expression of the mystery of life be tonally felt, not thought, you
can leave it unnamed, exactly as it is. It’s a matter of letting the tone of the atmosphere
bodily impact you and sense that as it is. This view can lead to compassion: the
judgments of the mind that “this is bad - it feels painful;” “this is good - it feels blissful,”
“this is right,” and “that is wrong,” take on a new meaning. Yes, you still feel pain, sad,
angry - all of it - and even more intensely, yet, these are seen as expressions of your
particular conditioning in response to a nameless arising. The egoic bodymind
automatically attaches thoughts, feelings, and stories to expressions that arise as such, out
of the stillness, and that is how conventional reality is created.

Creations of the mind are a relative, finite truth, and at a certain level of clarity, all
manifest phenomena point to the infinite truth. Like a using hiking map, you receive an
idea of where you are, but it is not the actual trail, the territory. Once you understand, and
see, how the outside reflects an inner dynamic, and how inside externalized to outside
become a map of what’s happening within. The rub is to mistake the map for the total
reality - that is what causes unnecessary suffering - when real life events do not unfold as
precisely reflected by your inner map, you can get irritated. Expectations create suffering;
resting in the following disposition provides great relief: out of the infinite stillness an
arising occurs, as an expression of creative forces - and that is what it is - just that.

That which you are is a mystery; it is not knowable, but neither is anything else. Life
is too vast, complex, and interconnected to become an object of your egoic knowledge.
Though you can sense life by receiving the impact of its tonal expression with your
whole-body felt sense; hence, life becomes a mysterious tonal expression of whatever
event that is happening. So completely relax, and allow that awareness to grow in your
soft, expanded, porous body - sink into it, be present to it, meet it, and open to it now. Lay
down all of your burdens, and rest in an awareness of the unknowable mystery of life.
Allow yourself to relax all of your resistance into this awareness, all of your pain, your

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fear, your doubt, your hatred, self-loathing, brokenness, your weakness, your need, and
desire, and, your irritation. Nothing has to be different from what it is; relax into all that
you are - include everything - all of your wants, needs, and strivings, and especially what
you do not want to include. There is nothing left to fight against, to accomplish, and no
goal to reach, except to let awareness of the timeless stillness grow, and to let it embrace
everything within your heart, while your heart includes everything that you are.
Everything in the entire creation can be embraced in your heart because through the
fulcrum of stillness you are connected to everything in creation, literally.

Allow your awareness to expand as stillness, and let your sponge body absorb the
stillness into your every cell. Let the stillness softly expand beyond your body, eventually
to include everything, and as you do this, become aware of the sensations that stream up
and down, front and back, side to side, and in and out of your body, and, sense what
streams toward you from outside as you globally listen. You may continue this gentle
expansion as far over the edge of the horizon and beyond the known, as you wish.
Continue to include ever more into your awareness, and sense within your body the
streaming into, out of, and as, your awareness.

Once you are able to sense from within your body to beyond the edge of the horizon,
beyond the known, bring awareness, also, to the within of your body, yet continue to
maintain your awareness of the beyond. Sense what it is like to be aware of the within of
your body with all of its streaming, and of the currents from the beyond, at the same time.
Yet, this is sensed as your whole-body felt sense awareness, so sense this from within
your sensing body. This awareness is what I call the position-less position; your
awareness fixates on nothing. Attention is fluid, spontaneous, and it can freely flow, shift,
and be present to anything. This is how awareness operates when it is connected to the
Breath of Life. You can relax because there is no ‘me’ to hurt, no ‘me’ to protect, it is all
an expression of the same splendor - as stillness, and, as form - and you are both, and
neither.

When you are ready, you may leave off this exercise, yet this whole-body felt sense,

16
as a fundamental organ of perception has always been here, and it never leaves. When
you remain perceptually connected to your whole-body felt sense, and continue to permit
it to deepen and expand, it will grow for the rest of your existence without end. Yet it also
always remains ever new. Remain open to stillness as presence - the Friend that never
leaves you. There are many names for this, and they are all of limited usefulness, because
it is a mystery that remains unnamable and unknowable. You can only awaken to what is
always and already here, and only right now.

This is the fulcrum practice for preparing yourself for your bodily encounters with
the Breath of Life. All subsequent practices offered in this workbook depend upon, and
build from this foundational practice. This is an exercise of inquiry into the truth of what
you are - a timeless exploration into your own awareness as non-separate whole-body felt
sense presence. It is always becoming, always and forever expanding, expressing ever
new, uncreated, unknowable, unlimited, primordial, stillness - both inside and outside -
and, it is also limited and finite as a body, mind, and an ego. The simplest way to put this
in practical terms is to abide within your heart in the SA Node, as that which is always
aware, as stillness, as presence. It may also help if you become aware of how often and in
what ways you tend to leave your heart, and externalize your search for this presence
outside - to go looking for it outwardly - and if you practice repeatedly relaxing your
awareness back inside the heart, the seat, or home of awareness in the body, then one day
you will acclimate to it, and your practice will bear fruit. Then, practice will no longer be
necessary. The heart is our topic for the next two chapters, so when you are ready, come
along and let us explore it together.

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 Chapter 2 - The Challenge: To find ground and keep center.

“Owning an I is not easy, and keeping it is even harder.”

~Jacques Lusseyran

When practicing neutral touch, the ever-deepening challenge is: how to maintain
body-felt awareness of the heart - the ground of one’s being - and, how to return to
ground at will. This requires the skill to come back to center when the intensity of the
impact of a session throws you off center because the experience triggers your
conditioning. Both the ability to ground, and to remain centered, involves abiding as the
awareness of your “I” within your midline and heart.

This presents a dilemma though, because we are told that there are two levels to the
“I.” There is a “self” and a “Self.” How do we distinguish between the two, and what is
the boundary of each? Jacques Lusseyran in his book, Against The Pollution Of the I,
helps us differentiate these two “I’s.”

“There are two levels to the I, just as there is an outside and an inside to every
object. Most speak exclusively of the outer, what I will refer to not as the “I” but as the
“ego.” It is our ego that wishes to make every one of us different, to gather for ourselves a
greater share of the booty of life, to be in the right, even when we are in the wrong. It is
our ego, which gives rise to those monstrosities about which no one would dream of
saying a bad word: jealousy and competitiveness. It also gives rise to fanaticism, and to
authoritarianism that likes to pass itself off as genuine authority. The ego is the seat of
power, which seeks to estrange us from one another. This ego, this treacherous part of our
I is everyone’s avid concern - and especially that of the educators. In times past students
simply were in the wrong when they did not do their work or did not understand
something. It was their efforts, their actual accomplishments that were considered
meritorious. Today everyone rushes to protect the pupil’s ego: heaven forbid that it
should suffer harm! One formulates universally comprehensible truths and facts of
middling complexity, so that not a single ego shall ever feel itself inferior. And since each
discipline has a point beyond which most egos are unable to penetrate, these limits are set

18
by decree as the end goals of learning. But that is not all, nor are the educators necessarily
the guiltiest; advertisers have taken possession of the ego. Their entire activity consists of
seizing upon isolated whims and, soon as these have been parceled out to a sufficiently
large number of clients, of transforming them into moral truths and legitimate and
respected rules of conduct. What all of them forget is that the ego is not the I, but only the
most transient, quivering, arbitrary surface of the I. By giving the ego free reign, the I is
put to death.

“The I is fragile. It is not even something that we really own. It is a kind of vitality -
yes, at most a kind of vitality. It is a force not far removed from its birth. It is a promise,
if you will, given to man, that one day he will be as the universe, that one day he will see
the world with eyes opened wide, that he will perceive himself and be able to recognize
that there exists an ordered relationship, a necessary reciprocity between the world and
himself. The I, in brief, is still so little that a mere nothing as it were, suffices to rob us of
it. And now I see it beleaguered and warred against!

“Let us speak of the true I. At least let us try. What I call the I is that animation, that
impulse, that allows me to make use of the four elements (earth, water, air, fire) of this
earth on which I live, also of my intelligence and of my emotions and dreams. It is in sum
a force that imbues me with a power afforded by no other force on earth: the power to live
without waiting for life to come to me. The ego needs the greatest number of things:
money, fame, approbation, power, and reward. The I makes no such demands. When it is
present, when it is at work, it sets its own world up against the other world, the world of
things. The I is wealth in the midst of poverty. It is vital interest when all around are
bored. It is hope when all rational bases for hope are gone. From out of the I springs
man’s whole world of invention. And, finally it is what we still have left when all else has
been taken from us, when nothing comes to us from outside and yet our forces are
sufficient to overcome the void. The I of man, it is true, has never been very strong -
saving only in a very few isolated individualities. Our age is no more deprived in this
regard than all that have gone before. But in our day a new fact must be reckoned with:
the attempt is being made to drive out the I, to drive it out once and for all so as to finally

19
to be rid of it. War is waged against the I, the most dangerous of all wars, because it
occurs to no one to declare it openly.”

The I

There’s only one I with two functions, yet, western philosophy has created a split in
our psyche through its over-emphasis on the centrality of the thinking mind and the ego.
The I is born out of stillness. Inside each person there is a vertical core, the midline,
which is a column of stillness located in the center of the spine; and outside, the greater
stillness emanates the whole creative field of life - known as the Tao, Dynamic Stillness,
Prajnaparamita, or the Unborn Buddha-mind. The two stillnesses are one, but culturally
we have split them into a smaller self as ego, and larger Self, by the process of thought.

In the West, Descartes sealed this split, between I and ego, when he injected into the
western psyche the concept “I think therefore I am.” His tenant positioned the ego as the
sovereign arbiter over reality, nature, and existence. This, as a by-product, contributed to
the felt sense of separation - “I am not that.” Juxtapose Descartes' idea with the direct
experience that occurs when your whole-body felt sense cultivates stillness in your
thoughts that connects ego to I, and reunites them as one in the heart. This non-
separateness ignites and reawakens your whole body to its conscious felt sense as an
organ of perception - it perceives. Body felt sense reconnects you to the living flesh of the
world - that elemental power, or mysterious matrix of life that is conscious and lighter
than space, which underlies and gives rise to both perceiver and perceived as
interdependent aspects of one creative activity. This quality cannot be named, but it is
called the Sacred Tremor, or, Dynamic Stillness.

When your awareness engages life through whole-body felt sensing, you reciprocate
with the world and the world reciprocates back, as Presence-to-presence. And this world
presence is the presence of Flesh to flesh; the world flesh to your own. Expressions of
flesh disclose themselves to your whole-body felt sense as energetic vectors, patterns,
tones, and inner currents - styles of movement that unfold in dynamic ways, which
engage the senses and modulates the bodymind.

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 Like a reciprocal membrane in a dynamic relationship with the natural world, the
body draws sustenance and substance from the air, water, light, plants, soil, and other
elements that surround the body, and it gives back in kind to nature as if by a secret
respiration. This manifests in you as the body felt sense of both breathing with, and being
breathed by, the lemniscate of primary respiration. Breath of Life is felt breathing
throughout your entire body as one unit, and all the parts are united as one. You are
challenged when you reunite with nature consciously, because the I of the world becomes
your I, and your I becomes the I of the world in a process of reversal and transmutative
exchange.

The conceptual split between two presences - world and man – dissolve, and your
awareness becomes both universal and fully personal at the same time and in the same
space. The first step along this challenging pathway is to develop your whole-body felt
sense. Your portal is through the cultivation of stillness, which, to the ego, feels
threatening because through direct contact with stillness it experiences its own chaos, and
it threatens its sovereign control over life, so stillness and aloneness is intensely avoided
by the ego (Chapters four and five explore this thoroughly).

This is compounded by a common misperception promulgated by many spiritual

teachers who declare that when you awaken to the truth of no separation that you must
totally eliminate and loose your ego, as a sense of a separate self. Not so: The ego is a
functional necessity, so after perceptually realizing your bodily wholeness, the ego will
recede into the background whenever its services are not required. But it is always
available when it is called upon. For example, you might be relaxing on the couch abiding
in global awareness with little or no sense of your ego as a separate self, which is
appropriate, and then someone calls your name and asks you a question. Spontaneously
your attention contracts and brings the ego to the foreground, and your sense of self
emerges and you can answer the question. Then, after the exchange is over, your attention
relaxes its focus on the sense of self, and the ego recedes into the background since it is
no longer needed, and global awareness returns. This transpires undetected, in a very
seamless, instinctual manner. The ego, as a separate sense of a finite self, is available as

21
needed to function in the world, and when that need is fulfilled, it recedes back and
dissolves in the vast ocean of awareness. Your attention is the primary modulator of this
function - it can contract and bring forth the ego, or, as it relaxes its focus awareness
expands to abide in infinite stillness - back into that part of you that is unborn and does
not die. And the whole time you get to observe all of this from a front row seat called, in
my case, “Charles.” Your ego - as a very finite part of your awareness - exists and floats
in a vast ocean of stillness that is your infinite awareness. After a sufficient period of
bodily acclimation, the ego will gradually begin to recognize its new disposition, and will
no longer cling to its need for control - it will eventually cease driving the bus of life. It
becomes a happy passenger that permits the presence of the Breath of Life to take control,
which after all, has managed life on her own since the beginning of creation.

Getting back to the midline, let us take a closer look at the microcosmic, or the
personal portion of this ‘I’ sense. The first recognizable functional structure that is
observed within the undifferentiated clear-as-glass fluid cellular protoplasm of the
embryo arises between day fifteen and seventeen. This function appears as a vertical line
in the embryonic plate. This vertical structure is initially called the primitive streak and it
appears out of nowhere. It is the first observable evidence that something beyond
primitive cell replication is about to occur. The primitive streak originates out of an
invisible mysterious column of dynamic stillness around which spiral forces generate
functional developmental movements in the embryonic cellular fluid matrix. These
fluctuations in the fluid of the embryo organize around this vortex of stillness, or fulcrum
in the center, and around this fulcrum motion radiates toward the periphery; this is what
appears at first glance to be the chaos of a dynamic fluid activity. However, all of this
movement is functional, that is, its activities are intelligent functions, they are not
random. Each motion performs a precise physiological job relative to the creation of the
human being. That is why the fluid dynamics are said to have an intelligence that still
baffles scientists today. In this apparently chaotic whorl, specific molecules congregate to
form very particular substances. These substances are precisely polarized, which
specifically draws them to other substances out of which cells are formed. Then the cells
enfold, evaginate, divide, and differentiate into two cellular layers: An inner layer, the

22
endoderm, and an outer layer, the ectoderm. Between these two cell layers, there is an
extremely dynamic polarity that ignites like a fire, creating a third, middle layer, and
mesoderm arises. Mesoderm is the fluid matrix (mother), or template, in which the entire
human form emerges. Though organized around a vertical column of stillness, or
primitive streak, the mesoderm begins to grow from the bottom up, out of the top of this
streak like a solid trunk. I am reminded of the tree of life that is firmly rooted in stillness;
similarly, this mesoderm-rich notochord, as it is now called, remains the fulcrum around
which the body forms and maintains itself throughout the life of the body.

Mesoderm is the template or matrix for the formation of the notochord, which is the
reference beam for bodily formation. Once established, the notochord becomes the
fulcrum for the segmentation that begins from the top down, and as the segments descend,
the embryological units are formed. These are the building blocks within the embryo’s
fluid matrix that are responsible for the developmental motion that directs the cells
through the precise movements and migrations that make the immune system, nervous
system, cardiac system, endocrine system, and digestive system, and which specialize
into the spine, muscles, blood vessels, dermatomes, nerves, heart, lungs, guts, lymphatic
vessels, and so on. The notochord is simultaneously the fulcrum for the creation of the
connective tissue system: The body’s entire energetic communication system is derived
out of mesoderm-rich connective tissue as its conduction material, like the wires of an
electric system. In the body this is the ground substance that is between and inside the
cells.

Since mesoderm does not arise in the embryo until around day fifteen, it begs the
inquiry: what is its connection to the primitive streak and the column of stillness? Before
day fifteen, there is ectoderm and endoderm only. Mesoderm arises out of the invisible
bioelectrical axis that becomes the primitive streak, which begins from the tail end of the
embryo, rising upwards to the head. A very rapid proliferation of cells ensues from the
primitive streak. As cells pour in from the ectodermal layer, they pass in all directions
between ectoderm and endoderm, which forms the intraembryonic mesoderm. The
mesoderm then differentiates into the three layers, which then forms all of the structures

23
mentioned above. The rapid growth of the embryo eventually leaves the primitive streak
behind in the coccyx bone, which becomes a primary site for ignition of the potency of
the longitudinal fluctuation of the Breath of Life in the adult. The notochord ends in the
floor of the third ventricle, so the two ends of the original midline, the bioelectrical axis,
remain intact between the coccyx and the third ventricle.

At the cranial end of the primitive streak, the primitive node becomes the
neuroenteric canal, which later becomes the gut tube, the frontal midline. Meanwhile, as
the notochord forms, the segmented vertebral column forms around the notochord. The
primitive node is also a communication link between the yolk sac and the amniotic cavity,
which later forms the cerebrospinal fluid filled chambers, the ventricles. This further
connects the neural tube of the ectoderm - the neural tube is formed from ectoderm that
enfolds from outside to inside - to the lining of the guts, the endoderm, gut tube. Here lies
the mystery of the connections of all three midlines: The frontal gut midline and its
connections to the notochord midline, and with the cerebrospinal fluid midline. The brain
and the gut areas secrete similar hormones related to pain control. The three midlines also
connect at the coccyx as well as the third ventricle.

It has been postulated that the primitive streak emanates currents that exit and then
reenter the embryo with the information needed to guide the cells to migrate and produce
form - this, then, is the template for the formation of particular organs with specific
functions. It is as though the Idea, as the energetic template of motility that contains the
information for creating the Image, already inherently exists in the intelligence of nature.
Some sort of emanating radiance from the primitive streak retrieves this information from
outside the embryo, and when the retrieved information returns to the embryo it contains
the information (Image) for the creation of the likeness - the human form. These radiating
currents emanate out of the neural crest and it opens our inquiry into to the possibility that
the nervous system is the physical anatomical extension of this source field of formation,
like an antenna (see Appendix 2, ‘anterior dural girdle’ in Stillness). This source field is
the gravitational center, or fulcrum of the body that exists before the formation of the
primitive streak, and it emanates currents throughout the embryo as it forms the human

24
body. Is it therefore, the primary midline, or, is the heart field the source of it? (See
Appendix 2, ‘heart,’ in Stillness).

Fluid is the ground substance, like that between embryonic plates, and in which this
original midline is formed. This fluid is a living, intelligent substance that carries out this
incredible process of transmutation. Fluids in the body behave like a liquid crystal, which
are the rule and not the exception in living systems. It has been scientifically
demonstrated that crystals emit a constant, steady electrical resonance field when
undisturbed. When a force such as gravity, for example, is introduced into the fluids it
compresses them, which sets up an oscillation of electric pulsations and harmonics that
holographically represent the precise degree of gravitational force that is acting on the
fluids. This holographic representation in the fluids contains the information of the
precise nature of the introduced forces as movements that take place in the fluids, and this
information is transmitted to the surrounding living matrix as a whole, which changes the
polarity of the chemical structures, and triggers the production of specific substances.
These adaptive substances then aggregate into and out of cells, and finally create a new
anatomical form throughout the entire matrix to thus accommodate to the forces
introduced.

It behooves us to appreciate this process: that there is an energetic form that

inherently exists as the Original Idea, or Original Matrix of Health, as James Jealous calls
it. This formative process operates in the fluids, which constantly changes in response to
stress; it is called Wolff’s law when related to osseous change, but this law can be
extended throughout all bodily compartments.

Wolff’s Law states: “The form of the bone (or by extension any other tissue) being
given, the bone elements (collagen) place or displace themselves in the direction of the
functional pressure and increase or decrease their mass to reflect the amount of functional
pressure.”

So it is, that these three cell layers ectoderm, mesoderm, and endoderm follow
Wolff’s Law as it interfaces with the Original Matrix, or the holographic blueprint of

25
healthy motion, which acts through the fluids combined with gravity, to precisely build a
human body. The fluids are intelligent, and they make decisive and precise movements
that form a human in utero. After birth, this intelligent blueprint in the fluids continues to
maintain, defend, repair, and heal all parts of the body until your last breath. During all of
this cellular layering, there occurs an invagination that creates a second midline that
parallels the first, forming a dorsal cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) filled midline. The
notochord is composed of mesoderm around which original bodily structure (form)
organizes; this is the ventral midline. The dorsal midline, made of ectoderm, creates the
central canal and ventricles, and it carries within it the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF), which
transmits the potency of original blueprint for the energetic patterns of healthy functional
motion, and which ultimately organizes as a functional nervous system and its extension,
the skin. The energetic impulses that resonate between the two midlines generate forces
within and between them that create turbulence in the fluid matrix (ground substance),
which precisely mirrors those energetic patterns that create and maintain our human form.
Then, these patterns are transmitted throughout the body to organize the form and
function of the body in every detail with help from the neurohormonal system as
conducted by the heart’s coherent field. The third, frontal, gut midline forms out of
endoderm, which connects the orbit frontal loop near the third ventricle to the face,
sinoatrial node, gut system, and then to the cisterna chyle to navel to coccyx as a
descending current, which synchronizes the tonalities of perception, immunity, psychic,
and spiritual development.

Furthermore, the ovum polarizes at the point where the sperm penetrates it, which
forms the site of the polar axis for the development of the embryo; this is the fulcrum for
cell division. This original point of sperm contact with ovum is the fulcrum where spirit
penetrates matter becomes the source polarity, which forms the entire foundation of all
future development, including the primitive streak and the notochord. The heart develops
at the tip of the notochord, and I suggest that the point where the sperm penetrates the
ovum becomes the SA Node in the heart, and provides us with yet, another nugget for our
inquiry.

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 In summary, between day seventeen and six weeks the instructions for this untainted
original created pattern of healthy motion, or blueprint, is contained inherently within the
intelligence in the fluids, which directs the genes to produce the appropriate
transcriptions, and after six weeks genetics begin to take a more predominate role and
modifies the template information and personalizes it. Six weeks pass, then genetics gets
in on the act. Similar to a step down transformer: Blueprint energetic tone to fluid motion,
to membrane motion, to tissue motion (nervous, visceral, osseous, muscle, fascia, skin) -
the original blueprint patterns of healthy motion transfer from the invisible to the visible.
Fluids are the first physical touchstone for the formation of the human body, and, for
cranial practitioners, it is important to know this since we work primarily with fluid
motility.

So, a mystery is brought into play: What is this invisible force that creates these
movements in the fluids of the embryo, and which at day seventeen forms a vertical
fulcrum of stillness out of which grows the notochord, and around which is created the
bodily form in precise detail? It is unanswerable, yet it can become an exciting life
endeavor in your search for the Spiritual Fulcrum of Life.

The fulcrum occupies a central place in biodynamic cranial touch. A fulcrum, as you
recall from Stillness, is defined as an area of stillness that functions as the center of
organization. Everything from atoms, molecules, organelles, cells, organisms, organs,
bodies, solar systems, memory, ideas, sexual relationships, social organisms, community,
biological, psychic, and spiritual organizations - each has a center, a fulcrum, a
gravitational point of stillness around which activity takes place. Just as the sun is the
center of our planetary system, creation manifests itself as comprehensive, interrelated,
integral systems of fulcra that operate in coherence with each other. Each system
constellates an infinite number of particular fulcra within those atoms, molecules, cells,
organisms, planets, and so on, that resonate coherently, yet each unit still maintains its
own independence and uniqueness.

Each person is both a unique individual who determines her own freedom - what she
is able or not able to do - and she is placed in the universal fulcrum, which unites her with

27
the whole. Your personal freedom, health, perception, and wholeness are synchronized
between the fields of spirit and the natural world. When all of your fulcra resonate, there
is a coherence that unites ego with I, and separateness disappears. Life becomes one
seamless dance. “I am” is a statement of that awareness of unity - awareness of the
fulcrum of indestructibility that protects you from the fear of death. The ego is afraid of
wholeness. Afraid, that if it gives up control over to the wholeness, it will be engulfed and
forever annihilated in the abyss, or, trapped in eternal lifelessness, nothingness, and
meaninglessness - rendering a complete and permanent extinguishing of consciousness. “I
AM” is the fulcra of wholeness, an eternal awareness of the unwavering presence of
stillness, that transcends the engulfing gravitational fulcra of the abyss, and it overcomes
the fear of death. “I AM” is therefore an assertion that there are fulcra other than the fear
of death, and is the counterpoint to the concept of a death that is without meaning or
continuity of consciousness. You awaken to the truth of what you are: an awareness that
is not separate from any part of life. As awareness, you arise out of Dynamic Stillness that
is unborn, uncreated, in the eternal now, and it will never die, and yet paradoxically, you
are also finite, afraid, broken, insecure, and separate humans, and, you are going to die.
Once the mystery of the fear of death is solved, it opens you up the possibility for the
conscious encounter with the Breath of Life.

“He who has had experience of the kernel of his being, he who has once been truly himself
permeated by the divine breath, bathed in divine light and ardent with divine warmth, he knows
what immortality is and that he is immortal.”

~Anon

Fulcra tend to organize in polar opposite fashions: they can be terrestrial and
celestial. The terrestrial fulcra organize around the forces of gravity that move from the
periphery toward a focused activity that tends to produce form; generally operating
through the process of condensation, enfoldment, and incarnation, they are point centered.
Celestial fulcra organize around the forces of levity, thus they are expansive, and tend to
radiate as potency; they orient from center to the periphery, or, open out to infinity. Your
personal balance point, the zero point between terrestrial and celestial fulcra, is in the
heart where the two fulcra connect. To access this zero point requires that you practice

28
solitude, stillness, and silence. This tension point in the heart is the dynamic tension of
solitude, which is another name for aloneness. When you become comfortable in your
aloneness, then your perception becomes more fluid and is free to either orient vertically,
as a celestial orientation, or it can horizontally toward the terrestrial as needed. Then,
after having accomplished your task on the level that requires your attention, it returns to
the balance point, to the center in the heart and, paradoxically, without ever leaving the
heart.

Therefore, a fulcrum is a point of stillness, around which all activity of awareness

occurs, and this stillness frees awareness so it can orient toward the vertical or horizontal.
Another way of putting this is: the unwavering presence of stillness is the portal that
grants your awareness access to a full and free dynamic range between terrestrial and
celestial realities. Ramana Maharshi, Rudolf Steiner, Swami Yogeshwaranand Saraswati,
Bubba Free John, Saniel Bonder, Neil Cohen, and others have experientially discovered
that the physical access point for this is located in the heart at the Sinoatrial Node (SA
Node), located in the upper right chamber in the back of the chest. The SA Node can be
navigated by feeling into it, using whole-body breath and your whole-body felt sense.
You can feel into this place, and after you acclimate bodily to the quality you feel here,
you can begin to stabilize the presence of stillness in your body as a new awareness, and
an expanded level of perception. (Remember, that the heart, lungs, diaphragm, and gut
were originally located on the tip of the notochord before they descended, so the SA Node
is an ignition point intimately related to the third ventricle. This ignition point in the heart
also connects to the diaphragm, and the viscera, or lower dan tien).

The mind and ego is normally focused and engaged externally toward a terrestrial,
horizontal orientation. It orients to, and is powered by, past experience, memory, and the
future - this is the motor force that impels you to act on the level of ego. As mentioned
earlier, thought plays the primary part in this by placing names on events that arise, which
are unnamable, and then it develops stories about the names based on the past, or upon
future concerns, which then stimulates feelings, and thus, you are lead to some act based
on this thought-feeling story (this is known as conditioning).

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 When your awareness breathes peripherally, to the edge, or beyond, the horizon it
orients vertically. Here, the reversed will plays the educative role towards feeling and
thought. In the reversed will, you act without knowing anything about it ahead of time;
action is initiated by the whole-body felt sensing of the impact from the tonal expression
of the energy of life. You sense tonal vortices, currents, and movements that impact you
and which instinctually spur you to act spontaneously, out of the will. Then arises the
affect (feeling), and finally understanding is possible (if at all). This is the reverse of your
normal sense of perceptual reality - perception is inverted. Again, you act without
knowing why, or anything about it ahead of time. The impulses arise out of the
spontaneous movement of your being, from within - as tonal movements of energy,
currents, and vortices that impels you to an instinctual skillful action, and the mind may
follow along (usually far behind). This certainty, through which action takes place
without knowing ahead the plans, or having a clear idea of how and through what stages
things are to be accomplished, is trust. Trust is living in the not knowing - an implicit
trust in the wisdom that is inherent in life - based on your moment-to-moment experience
of the wisdom that is contained in each tonal arising as whole-body felt sense awareness.
This leads to inner certainty, a confidence of being, which is not based on thinking, or
learnedness.

It is the complete reversal of how we normally operate in life, because it is a

willingness to live in total insecurity. This instinctual wisdom is a purely experiential way
of living life. There is nobody, no ego, strategizing to control life. The only certainty is
that you are sure you cannot control life, and, you are sure you do not know what life is,
and yet you irrevocably trust it, and you live in that trust. Practically, you respond with
presence to each experience as it arises in the moment, and, to your constant delight, your
responses are appropriate. You realize that the wisdom of the whole manages life without
your having to be in control of it. This wisdom in the east is called Prajnaparamita; in the
west it is Sophia.

Goethe used the term exact imagination to describe this phenomenon of reversed
will: you dispense with an imagination which floats in free and arbitrary association,

30
where arisings are named, and a story develops around the named. Rather, in exact
imagination, you apply your awareness to being attentive to the experience as it arises.
The will is now imbued with the qualitative aspects of life, and not so much the
quantitative.

What does this mean practically? Without insulting your intelligence, let us take a
very simple example from modern medical science. If viewed from a rational-logic,
medical point of view, a patient who dies of cancer is a failure on behalf of the efforts of
modern medicine, by virtue of the medical treatment not being capable of curing cancer,
and, the patient has failed to thrive in terms of years. However, if you apply heart logic to
this event, and you take into account also the quality of his life – and his death - to
evaluate if, in fact, his cancerous death was a failure. So, to consider this same patient
from the point of view of the moral logic of the heart: if, as a result of his experience with
cancer, he healed his relationships, completed his important projects, accepted his illness,
and his impending death, and subsequently died peacefully, open hearted, with a felt
sense of love and openness to those around him and to life - can you call that a failure?
Yes, logically speaking, modern medicine failed him, and he lived fewer years, a
quantitative issue; but can it be also said that the quality of his life to the end was a
failure? Let this enquiry sit with you for a bit, without an answer, as we begin to explore
opening ourselves more fully to heart logic.

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 Chapter 3 - Opening Your Heart as an Organ of Perception.

“All day, all night, a quiet bright; If it fades, we fade.”

~Rumi

This chapter explores practices through which you can develop awareness of the
heart as your primary organ of perception. Abiding in heart perception can help you stay
present during powerful encounters with the Breath of Life. In other words, here is what
you can do to inwardly prepare for the five levels of experience with touch. Remember,
these levels are arbitrarily divided so the mind can understand them, but all the ‘parts’ are
one seamless practice.

Rational thinking suppresses heart perception, which is actually whole-body felt

sensing, because thought separates body from mind. The millions of thoughts that rush
headlong through your conscious and subconscious faculties of perception, without your
having any say in the matter, deludes your awareness with so much noise that you do not
know you exist outside the confides of thinking. To check out how much control you
have over your conscious thought process, try Jacques Lusseyran’s practice:

“Try an exercise with me: tonight, as we get ready for bed, let us stop for two
minutes and be absolutely still. And let us ask ourselves what actually goes on inside us.
What I am suggesting is an examination of your consciousness. Each of us has an inner
space, and we have to cross it to take stock of its contents. What we shall find is a
confused jumble of images and sounds; sounds that arise and will not fall silent again,
shreds of pictures that never succeed in developing into a complete form. But we shall
find things that are even less distinct, things of the nature of impulses, of stirrings that
take on the force of compulsion. All this is no more than the ordinary flotsam of normal
consciousness, and there is no reason to be astonished by it. But it should prompt us to
ask: are those scraps of images and sounds, those fragments of desire - are they really my
own? Are they really mine or have others instilled them in me? Is it really my voice that I
hear in this way? Is it the voice of my wife, of my children, of my friends, of a living

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being? Often the pictures are scenes from television; they will be pictures from all the
signs, posters, and placards that are thrust under my nose from earliest morning on, in the
streets of the town; pictures like the ones on the front page of the paper, in the windows
of stores, even on the box of detergent. As for the voices, they will be my own and those
of my family, but never alone; always they will be mingled with other voices, strangely
familiar and yet entirely impersonal - those of all the women and all the men whom I
have never met, to whom moreover I would have nothing to say, and who in any case are
not speaking to me. What am I saying? Of course they are speaking to me! They do
nothing but speak to me - on radio, on television, in the cinema, over the telephone, on
paper, on magnetic tape (and now on the computer with the internet, an ever more
insidious perpetration can occur). They speak, yet nothing real takes place when they do.
They do not know to whom their words are directed. They speak only because they know
that in our day words are a saleable commodity. My inner space does not belong to me:
that is the unpleasant discovery I am forced to make. Certainly I come across a few
personal effects here and there, but rather as one comes across a needle in a haystack. Nor
does my inner space belong to those others: I have not consciously made it over to them.
It belongs to no one! It is littered with things. We already have automobile cemeteries,
which ruin the countryside. And here I am becoming a cemetery myself: of words, of
exclamations, of music, of gestures that no one makes quite in earnest, of information and
instructions, of word sequences repeated an hundred fold without anyone consciously
wanting them (to repeat inside oneself).

“And yet there can be no doubt that all these noises, all these images flashing
through my head are not my own. My “I” can ignore them; it can look for a way to live
without them. But where will it live? All available space is already taken; the outside
world has scattered its rubbish everywhere (in me).

“This is where courage is called for: the courage to say what at heart we all know,
but what we no longer have the strength to affirm. A human being to whom I give the
right to speak to me without my being in a position to reply is not a human being at all; he
is not a human being, but he affects me none the less. Music, which I have not myself

33
chosen to listen to, builds forms within me: they gallop about without order; they shape
me without my knowledge. As for my armchair picture traveling, if I do not go there in
actual fact they remain utterly useless.

“Soon there will not be an inch of our inner space that is not trampled underfoot each
day. Love is becoming a spectacle. All this would not be particularly serious if men were
no more than machines. But it turns out that they are something quite different, for they
possess an I. And this I has its own rules. The I has certain quite specific conditions under
which it will grow. It nourishes itself exclusively on its own activity.

“Actions that others take in its stead, far from helping, serve only to weaken it. If it
(the I) does not come to meet things halfway out of its own initiative, the things will push
it back; they will overpower it and will not rest until it either withdraws altogether or dies.
The dying of the I is a matter of direct experience. And if the majority of our
contemporaries can no longer experience that for themselves, is it not because their I has
already left them?

“The conditions necessary for growth is stringent for all that lives. But the I, the
human I is the most unstable of all our possessions, and the ravages that pollution inflicts
on it gain so rapidly that we no longer identify them by name. Worse, we call them by
other names. Public opinion polls, averages, numbers, for the I they are nothing, hardly
worth the computing. If it is not altogether asleep the I knows that truth never consists of
what the majority do or say. It knows the truth is what appears at the farthest limit of each
experience, of those experiences that are lived personally and to the very end.

“Each day the I is buried under an avalanche of numbers and figures that parade as
fact. Soon if we do not set to work with all the desperation due a matter of life or death
the truth will be nothing more in fact than whatever the greatest number thinks, and the
good whatever the greatest number (of people) does. For once I, who am never one to
advocate fear say: “Let us be afraid”.

“Make no mistake about it: war is being waged against the I. And just those who
have been traditionally closest to the I who have been as it were its guardians and

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prophets - the intellectuals and the artists - we now see going over by legions. Throughout
history a musician or painter expounded a particular point of view. It was his own with
such an intensity and power that sometimes he could find his way back to the universal.
But now the men of creative bent focus on methods and structures, and systems divorced
from the connection between the one who thinks and the things that are thought about.
Owning an I is not easy, and keeping it is even harder. As a human being we have been
touched by the force called the I, but it is not riveted in our bodies. It is at all times ready
to give up its place. The I is polluted more rapidly than the earth.”

Even though Lusseyran wrote that piece over twenty five years ago, what he speaks
of is now even direr when you consider how the worldwide web and digital life has
injected an even more powerful virtual world into our consciousness that leaves very little
space for anything else. Let us inquire into what to do to help prevent this predicament.

How to strengthen the ego.

A paradox presents itself here. The I is beyond the ego, so it envelops and contains
the ego, and yet, it is essential that the ego be strengthened in order for it to surrender to
the I to transcend itself as the center of life. The following experiential practices are
designed to strengthen your ego, and to stabilize it, so you can abide in your heart, and
your I can become the primary organ of perception, instead of the ego. The ego here is
defined as the sense of a separate self; its main agent is the thought driven personality,
the “me.” Each stage of the exercise includes all of the skills you have acquired in the
previous step, so anytime you find difficulty with a particular stage, simply go back to the
previous practice, and spend more time with it.

What this means will become clearer as you practice, and experience, the exercises.
Bear with me as I conceptually explain how a body felt direct encounter with life occurs
though the development of heart perception. The practice in chapter one is the foundation
practice for the entire sequence outlined below. These exercises are designed to gradually
strengthen the ego such that it can relax its desperate grip on your awareness. Awareness
can then unfixate, become fluid, and freed from the confines of the ego, and then the ego

35
will let go of control because it has experienced that it still exists after letting awareness
escape from its grip. When the ego relaxes, its strategies of control will recede and are
transcended. Then, all practices and techniques become hindrances, even the ones
outlined below. This is very important to understand: practices are not the actual
consciousness; they are efferent activities. Even spiritual practices, such as an inquiry that
seeks an answer, the use of mantras, observing breath, and so on, will, at a certain level of
your development, interfere with your direct bodily contact with the Breath of Life. File
this caveat away for now, because presently these exercises do have a place, as do all
spiritual practices.

Heart Perception. How to Perceive What is, as it is:

An Exercise for Realizing Vision Logic Awareness (see Stillness, Chapter 5):

These exercises are broken down into parts. We will begin with thinking. In this first
phase you will develop a skill called intentional thinking, which is the capacity to
maintain a logical sequence of thought for a definite chosen period of time.

Phenomenological observation of an object for five minutes

Obtain any simple non-living man made object such as a key, a safety pin, nail,
screw, tweezers, or a pencil - and place it where you can clearly view it. The less complex
the object, the better, because the purpose of this exercise is to strengthen your ability to
observe and describe your chosen object for five minutes continuously, and thus to
intentionally think. Attempt to characterize your observations for five consecutive
minutes. How do you characterize? Avoid saying to yourself “Well now, here is a key, it
is made of brass and is three inches long, and one half inch wide, and it fits into a
keyhole. That’s it, I’m done, no more to observe here!” In ten seconds you are completely
finished; this is what I call the ‘been there done that’ mentality; it is a good sign that the
ego is in charge. Instead, see if you can describe the features of your object in picture
language so your words will bring up an image of what you are observing without naming
that actual object, ‘key,’ for example. Later, your words will bring up an inner picture of
your object without actually you having to see the object.

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 It goes something like this, but you have to find your own way: “here is an object
that is shiny and silver. It is three and one half inches long, and is shaped like a ‘T.’ The
horizontal cross beam portion of the T is about two inches long, and a half-inch wide; it is
one-eighth inch thick. Either end of the horizontal cross beam has a circle punched out of
it that is one-fourth inch in diameter, so, there are two punched out circles on the
horizontal. The vertical shaft portion is three inches long from where it joins the
horizontal beam to the end. On the distal end of the vertical shaft, there is a welded,
round, barrel-like cylinder that is one half inch long and a half inch in diameter, and at the
very end of this little welded cylinder is an inner hollowed out area that is shaped like a
cube. This cube-shaped hollowed out space is one half inch by one half inch by one half
inch. Overall, the vertical shaft is composed of four perpendicular strips that together,
when viewed from bottom to top, look like a balanced plus sign, a three-inch long plus
sign...” and so it goes for about five minutes. You attempt to describe the object exactly
as it appears before your eyes and try not to let other thoughts or fantasy distract you. It is
important to avoid naming the object.

Repeat this every day at the same time if you can. At first, it is difficult to spend five
minutes concentrating on one thing - your monkey mind will flit about to avoid doing the
exercise, so you will have to return to the task repeatedly. Be patient, and commit to
bringing the mind back to observation and characterization dozens, maybe hundreds, of
times in five minutes. If you stick to it long enough, eventually, the mind develops an
interest in the process, and concentration for five minutes becomes more successful.
When the mind gets used to this type of concentration - it gets easier and more successful
- then, your mind will begin to engage in a new trick: parallel track thinking. You are
engaged in the exercise, and you find that you are also thinking, or fantasizing, about
something else at the same time you are describing your object. For example, while
describing your object, you also find yourself thinking about that plane ticket you have to
change before noon today. Or, you are whisked off into a land filled with imagery, where
the object is no longer what you are observing as such, rather, it has become a magical
symbol that contains very important cosmic messages that are a stairway to higher
realities, or the key to life, or what have you.

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 That is not phenomenological observation of the object as it appears; it is parallel
track thinking, or fantasy. As painful as it is to admit this to oneself, if you are unable to
admit to and face this unpleasant discovery about your mind, you may also be stuck in
fantasy during cranial, or touch sessions - which does not serve your client with what she
needs: your neutral presence. When parallel track thinking or fantasy occurs, you first
have to catch your mind in the act, and then apply more will to your observation exercise
- more applied interest and attention - but this is done softly, with humor and ease. The
exercise has taken on a bit of boredom to the mind due to the apparent rote nature, which
is why the mind splits off into parallel thinking, or fantasy. The challenge here is not to
fall victim to the boredom of routine, and, to catch your mind tripping off into fantasy, or
parallel track thinking. A beginner's mind makes this exercise an ever new and living
experience, and this is how you acquire the muscles of attention. Eventually, you will not
only succeed in this exercise - overcome the boredom and the parallel track thinking and
fantasy - you will also begin to enjoy a new confidence in your capacity to hold a thought
in your mind for a sustained period of time without interruption. Success requires
patience, discipline, repetition, effort, will, and a longing to be in charge of your own
faculties of awareness. Therefore, a healthy working relationship with your logical
thinking mind is essential. Though it is not evident at this stage, the purpose of this step
gives you the ability to remain attentive in stillness for as long as you care to visit it. So
now, let us proceed to the next step: feeling the object.

How to Feel What is as it is, Part One:

Realizing Psychic Consciousness (see Stillness Chapter 6)

If you are able to observe your object for five minutes without interruption, and have
met the challenges of boredom, fantasy, and parallel track thinking, then you are ready for
the second step. If you find the second step difficult, or impossible, you need more
experience in the first stage, so continue practicing it for several more days before
attempting the second step again. No use reinforcing failure; just go back and cultivate
those muscles of attention.

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 Start with step one, the observation of your chosen object, then in step two, close
your eyes and bring your object into your mind's eye - as a picture. Begin to characterize
your inner picture, as you observe it, just as you did in the first step, except now the
object is an inner picture that you have created in your mind’s eye with your creative,
imaginative faculties. If you find this impossible to do, the picturing does not take place
within, or the image is too faded to clearly make out the details, then go back and work
with the first observation step for a while.

If you are able to bring up the inner picture of the object, and you can hold it for a
sufficient period of time so that you are able to describe it in detail for a few minutes
uninterrupted, and, you have overcome all of the obstacles of parallel track thinking,
fantasy, or boredom, then two choices arise. Either you will naturally begin to notice a
subtle body felt sense inner heart connection to your object. Or, if you do not feel that
connection, then you can consciously allow the image to sink down into the heart and
observe it from within your heart.

Here, in the heart, you will feel the object - it feels alive - even though your mind
knows that it is dead. Your connection to your object feels like love. It sounds rather
preposterous to the ego, but it is a direct body felt experience in this observation process.
When you begin to feel inwardly touched, and affected by the object in this way, it
indicates that you are in the psychic level of awareness, and you are ready for the third
step, but only proceed after you experience the affect - the body felt sense heart
connection to the object.

How to Feel What is as it is - part 2:

Intensifying Your Realization of Psychic Consciousness

Bring your object in your mind's eye, as before, but this time do not use words to
characterize what you observe. Instead, observe all of the details in conscious mental
silence: wordless, with no thoughts. Do this until you are able to hold the image in your
mind’s eye, and you are able to move it holographically in space, silently. For example,
begin to observe your inner object from all viewpoints: the top, bottom, front, back, left

39
side, right side, inner, and outer. Then move your object: turn it, spin it, tumble it. Move it
holographically in the space of your inner eye. Observe this as a silent witness, without
words, as your object holographically moves inside your eye center space. Go through the
exact exercise, as above in steps one and two, except you perceive, or witness, each detail
silently, without words—no words, no thoughts—that’s the difficult part here. This is
much more difficult than you think, until you attempt it for yourself. Your holding back
of your thoughts engages pure perception, or primordial awareness.

When you feel confident observing silently in your headspace, proceed as before,
and allow the image to descend into your heart and observe it in silence here. The next
(fourth) step is not to be attempted until this third step is successful - that is: you can
observe, and move the object without words (thoughts) for about two minutes from within
your heart, and, you feel connected to the object. This step creates the required inner
space of silence in your heart to maintain a sufficient amount of inner stillness at will.
This is the most important part of the entire exercise sequence. If you have difficulty with
this step, then go back to the previous step and practice it for a while. Do not proceed to
the next step until you feel confident with this third step.

Please! Do not allow your inner perfectionist, or critic, to cheat you out of really
getting this. Be honest with yourself: if you are not successful practicing any stage of
these exercises, simply go back and spend more time on the previous one. When the time
is right, and your own pace has been found, the exercises will ‘take.’ You must let your
own specific process and progress evolve organically, so please do not short-change
yourself. Relaxing into this practice as a living, organic whole process is more essential
than getting through any one stage, or jumping through a hoop. This teaches you how to
be with life as an organic process, which is not goal oriented. Remember this is one
organic practice that is given in steps, so please accomplish each step before moving to
the next, like walking. Let us go to the last step in this part of the exercise.

Uniting Awareness with What is:

Realizing Subtle Consciousness (see Stillness Chapter 7)

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 You feel confident with the previous steps, so now bring up the object into your
inner eye, then let it descend in your heart and begin to silently move, tumble, and turn it
holographically in your heart space for a minute or two, until you have firmly established
it within as a picture. If this is difficult or impossible, go back to step one and start there
for one to two minutes, then step two for a minute, then step three for a minute, and arrive
here at step four. Then, let the object descend into the heart, while you experience the
poignant affect of the object, as described earlier - in silence.

With your inner picturing capacity stabilized, and you have established a felt sense
connection to your inwardly pictured object in silence in the heart - and that is the
important preliminary part of this exercise - now extinguish the picture-object. Eliminate
the image from your heart consciousness, so that you are no longer holding, or observing,
a picture within. In silence, quietly sense with the inner space of your heart field and as
the space within your body. Your head space will reflexively want to get in on the act -
and often your perception will rise to the head - but, continue to relax your perception and
orient it back down into the heart, and allow your head space to expand in your heart.
This is where the practice in chapter one comes in: open your heart perceptual space, and
let go of the grip you may have on your attention, and allow it to softly and freely radiate
out in all directions as you sense with your whole-body felt sense awareness - through
your soft, porous, permeable inner-heart space.

You may now sense, in the space of your body, sensuous currents, waves, swirls,
floatings, shimmerings, movements, images, colors, geometric shapes, tones, vibrations:
it could be anything. Just sense all of it, silently. Do not create any thoughts about it, or
look for a name, any meaning, or engage in fantasy, or mental chatter about what you are
‘supposed’ to be sensing. Simply witness, in silence, whatever is happening: do not name,
attach thoughts to it, do not grasp any of it, nor get excited about any of it. Allow the
feelings and sensations to naturally arise and impact you, let the feelings come, let them
go, and do not react to any of them. Receive them. Just relax and sense, as feeling
witness; just open to what is, and rest, and let your bodily sensations be the witness.
Simply notice the qualities in your bodily space: the ebb and flow, the sense of space,

41
warmth, colors, tones, and mood, without naming any of it. When you get used to this
body-felt experience, play with it. Let your heart perception expand to a larger more
global view - a larger perceptual field from which you sense what is happening - then,
gradually expand your perception from within your heart to as close to the edge of the
horizon as you can. If you feel safe to do so, expand your inner heart space beyond, or
over the horizon (of the known) - and bodily sense what arises in your awareness.

Once you feel confident with this part of the exercise, you can let your awareness
descend into your belly. Slowly, lower your body felt sense awareness down into your
belly. While you descend, allow any fear that your sense of a separate self brings up to be
absorbed by the darkness, the intensity, and the infinite sense of space here. See if you
can rest, repose here, and just notice all the wriggling of your thoughts, feelings, and body
sensations. Notice your longings, desires, all of your uncherished feelings and thoughts
that you keep suppressed. The rest of this exercise is entirely up to you: what you are
willing to allow to happen, how much you allow your ego give up its fear of your deep,
hidden, primordial feelings, and how deeply it is willing to surrender its control, and open
to a trust in the Wisdom that is inherent in this experience. This opening can occur
immediately, can take years, or never happen - and it really does not matter. When you
feel ready, you can proceed to the next exercise that has two parts.

The Midline - Heart Wash

This is an exercise for preparing yourself with your client in the room. Start this
exercise inside your eyes. Let your attention pour into and fill your eyes, and then draw
your attention through the eyes to a point behind and between your eyebrows within.
From here, thoroughly let your attention - as awareness, stillness, light, warmth, or
presence, or a fluid within a fluid - begin washing, very slowly, from front to back over
your entire brain and all of its convolutions and ventricles. This will take a few minutes;
then, continue down the spinal cord, by slowly washing everything in its wake with this
awareness - as a liquid light wash of stillness - down the spine to your coccyx. Proceed
from the the coccyx, to the core of mother earth, where you connect your awareness to a
place - as if there is a key that fits your personal keyhole in the core of the mother earth.

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 Note: Skip this if you do not know the anatomy:

You can also do this exercise as an anatomical tour through all the structures: Start
with your awareness at the lamina terminalis - the bridge of the bird’s beak of the third
ventricle - and simultaneously wash light along the anterior dural girdle, falx, and
tentorium. Wash - light up with stillness - the anterior commissure that arises out of the
superior part of the lamina terminalis, and continue back along the transverse septum to
the septum pellucidum, which connects pituitary to pineal; include Sutherland’s Fulcrum,
which begins functionally at lamina terminalis, and connects to the pineal at the greater
vein of Galen to the straight sinus. Then continue washing stillness through the
membranes, the ventricles, and the brain convolutions. Proceed down the entire core-link
to the core of mother earth, and connect your awareness, as if it were a key, that fits into
your personal keyhole in the earth’s core. Feel into this, try to refrain from visualizing the
structures*, and do not use words or name the structures.

*Initially, you may visualize the anatomy; it may help you with the thoroughness of
your wash, but once you have learned to wash with the imagined pictures of the
anatomical structures (the geometry of the Image) eliminate imagining and just wash
silently and picture-less in a feeling sense manner. If it is relevant for you the anatomy
will arise in your awareness and enlighten on its own, and you will see it arise inherently,
without visualization. This becomes a true gift in cranial sessions when anatomical
structures of your client spontaneously appear to you in silence of their own accord as the
blueprint, or the energetic form of the structures that the Breath of Life is working with.
Here is the interface between the invisible energetic pattern of healthy motion that creates
form, and the visible physical structures. A new definition of form arises here, at this
level of awareness: form is redefined as the energetic patterns of movement, which pre-
exist the appearance of the structure. Again, this is the energetic blueprint of form. The
next exercise can be practiced as an adjunct to this one, as outlined below.

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The Silence Exercise:

Causal Consciousness (see Stillness Chapter 8)

This exercise involves cultivating stillness, or silence, within and without, and is the
foundation upon which biodynamic cranial touch is practiced. Learn to concentrate
without effort as you relocate the center of your perception from the head - the brain - to
the center of eternal rhythm - your heart. Shift from a hard riveted head focus, to a soft
radiating openness in the heart. When you are able to bring the consciousness of your
head center down into the heart, all inertial thoughts and feelings are laid at the altar of
the grail, and they are transmuted in the eternal flame back into the organized wholeness
of life, which radiates to the infinite periphery, and then, back into the bodymind
renewed. Since the undifferentiated, or Pure Breath of Life radiates from the infinite
periphery to center, and your heart radiance radiates from the center to the infinite
periphery the circle is now complete and separation ends. Heart is the fundamental organ
for the perception of the deeper enfoldments of the cranial rhythms. By developing heart
perception, you can be fully present to, and resonate with, the client’s journey during a
session. In your heart space you begin to feelingly sense in a bodily manner, and you are
intuitively able to match and resonate with the tonalities of any one of the four elements
that are transmuted by heart consciousness into primordial instincts that express form
within any of the soul’s faculties of thought, feeling, and will. Below is an example of
how these named elements transmute into instincts when considered as tones, and
translated into the language of felt sense tonality in each soul faculty of thought, feeling,
and will.

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As your awareness descends more deeply into matter the elements become tones:

THOUGHT FEELING WILL

FIRE IMPULSION RADIATION

Creativity warmth intensity/ardor

AIR MOVEMENT EXPANSION

Clarity magnanimity scope/fullness

WATER FORMATION MOBILITY

Fluidity sensitivity adaptability

EARTH FORM STABILITY

Precision faithfulness firmness

Taken from a biodynamic cranial touch perspective, let us look at the four elements
as they mix during a session: Fire and air correlates with the quality of the tidal potency
outside (fire) meet with the inside of the space of the body (air). Fire and water correlates
with the process where the fluids produce a tidal potency within the body as vectorial
(fluid drive) and soft potencies, depending on the intensity of the mix of fire with water.
Fire, water, and earth are what power the tissue motion and its trophic effects. Fire and
fire is the point where Divine Perception and individual perception meet; this meeting is
required because it creates the matrix through which all the bioelectric fields are
permeated, and creates the whole biodynamic world space. When the Divine unites with
the individual, the mysterious loving presence behind all things becomes self-evident:
Form-earth-stability—Life-water-sensitivity—Sympathy-fire-impulsion—Awareness-air-
attention-space—all one seamless process of flow.

Your heart space will instinctually modulate itself alchemically to resonate with the
precise tonality that is created out of the mix between the elements, that is, the heart will

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expand or retract - furl and unfurl its petals - to bring a particular element to the
foreground or background so as to tonally match the client’s self-organizing life-field that
is within and surrounds the body (the Jealous’ zone B). If you are matched tonally, your
awareness matches the various layers of the cranial rhythms; the rate of primary
respiration; and the elemental tonal space of the client’s inertia that is required for
resolution. And, without your knowing their exact experience, the qualities of the
experience that the client is encountering all become apparent as a tonal textural quality
in your body felt sense perception from within the space of your body. Your conscious
tonally matched presence supports the client’s entire process. As a conscious feeling
witness, you bodily sense the rhythms of the cranial system on all of its layers, and in all
of its depth, which feelingly reveals to the client that you are present and can support
them as they are. This permits the client to go increasingly deeper into a neutral, and
farther into surrender to, and trust in, the wisdom of the Breath of Life. The key to how to
tonally match the client and her field intuitively lies in resting within the inner stillness of
your SA Node, while letting the spontaneous modulation of your perceptual heart space
match the appropriate zone and alchemical tone, combined with the balance of the hand
gravity-levity ratio that matches the motion present. You also learn to let your perception
be breathed in and out by primary respiration. When this is combined with the inherent
field of stillness of your heart, as such, then your perception will accurately reflect what
is occurring within the client’s system. Stillness does not come by suppression or control,
but is a natural effortless state of perfect calm, accompanied by complete relaxation of
the body in which the efferent direction of the attention, the nerves, and muscles comes to
rest (defacilitation).

By abiding in this manner, your entire being becomes like the surface of calm water,
able to reflect like a perfect mirror the harmony or disharmony that is present in your
client. And these waters of silence run deep: As the silence within grows, ever-increasing,
through regular waves which pass one after the other through your being; one wave of
silence followed by another wave of more profound silence, then again a wave of still
more profound silence. To begin with there are moments, subsequently minutes, then
quarters of an hour for which complete silence lasts. With time, the silence becomes a

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fundamental element, always present, which continues all the same whether you are
active or relaxed. This “zone of silence,” once established, is a resource that you draw
upon both for rest and for activity. Silence is the sign of real contact with the spiritual
world, a direct bodily contact that engenders the influx of forces that help. Your work
becomes play: An anointing, sweetness, and freshness then accompanies your work, in
which you bodily sense a secret and intimate respiration that brings your soul to rest and
in contact with the spiritual world, which leads to the feeling of being helped with the
weights of life. To further develop this direct bodily contact with stillness, try the next
exercise.

Stillness Exercise:

To Synchronize with the Breath of Life

So, sit each morning and become aware of the inherent silence within your body.
Allow your awareness to rest in quiet stillness. Do not try to have it, just open to silence;
it is always and already here. By opening your perception to the inherent presence of
stillness, it enters and fills your being, and you thereby let more silence enter your
perception. If you’re having a difficult meditation day - what I call drowning in millions
of thoughts in pitch blackness, filled with hurry or worry - you may have to start with the
inner picture of your object, and then extinguish the picture, and proceed with the silent
sensing to get to the silence. Once you have successfully allowed silence within, it can
become your foundational state of consciousness - a form of intimate respiration within,
where you are so permeated that you feel breathed by and suspended in, silence, and then,
you can proceed to the last step of this exercise. This preparatory stage may take years, so
do not lose patience with yourself.

Stillness Wash:

To Synchronize the Breath of Life with Your Midline

Start at the top of your head. Let your brain become open and receptive while you
wash silence or stillness, down through your brain, through your throat, and into your

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heart. Completely let your brain, throat, and heart fill with stillness, until it permeates
your entire heart field. Then permit the stillness from your heart to wash down through
your limbs, into your arms, and your belly, pelvis, and down into your legs. Next, allow
stillness to rise up to through the throat and fill your head until it overflows and pours out
through your sense gates - eyes, ears, nose, and mouth - until stillness fills the space
around your body. So now, your entire body within (Jealous zone-A), and the space
around it (Jealous zone-B) are immersed and floating in a field of stillness. Intensify your
field of stillness, and then completely relax all efforts, and begin to receptively sense what
is streaming toward your field of stillness. Your perception is now a listening, sensing
field-of-stillness that is able to perceive and receive what is occurring within and around
you. Allow this field of stillness to naturally expand into the room (Jealous zone C) and to
the edge of the horizon (Jealous zone D) or beyond, as a global-sensing that is like a
passive listening, or waiting, but not for anything, just waiting. Whatever arises, just
sense it, do not name it, or think about what it is, just be aware of the expression as such.
Remember, what you sense may be in any form - currents of motility, vortices,
sensations, wisps, vibrations, sounds, tones, colors, shapes, patterns, flutters, shimmering,
but whatever it is, just sense it, try not to name any of it.

Midline I Am

Now, from your heart space, simultaneously feelingly sense a vertical line of
awareness projecting down into the earth’s core, and up beyond the ends of the cosmos,
while you let your heart field radiate to infinity. Then, let everything go, and just be -
exactly as you are right now - whatever that is.

These are the primary inner exercises that can prepare you for the healthy
development of your subtle body - your body felt sense - which perceives the cranial
wave, and all of its extended enfoldments of depth. Your whole-body felt sense will be
your guide to the perception of more subtle bodies of awareness, until finally no body that
functions as a separate sense of self is needed, and you awaken to the unborn,
unwavering, primordial awareness as the bodiless body of the Sacred Tremor, or
Dynamic Stillness.

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 Practicing the above exercises is equivalent to going to the gym to increase the
strength of your physical body, except here, you develop perceptual-spiritual muscles of
the heart that render you capable of any encounter without getting caught up in, or
shattered by, the affect of direct bodily contact with the Breath of Life. You are able to
maintain awareness of the ground of your being - to maintain your sense of I
consciousness: you may have little, or even no self-consciousness, in some cases - yet the
Wisdom that is in charge of life always provides precisely enough awareness during
events that may be overpowering in their archetypal and elemental power and effect on
your mind and emotional systems. Yet, your I holds up through it all. You also are able to
center your being - to readily return to your own midline, or I AM consciousness, when
thrown off by a powerful direct body-felt experience. The key is to gradually develop the
capacity to maintain an unwavering presence of stillness during any encounter, and
especially when encountering nothing! This is gradual, and a natural process of
stabilizing your awareness, which requires that the ego relax, no longer run your life, and
you cease being distracted by the relentless attractions of the externalized show of life on
boogey street.

The following instructions are meant for advanced practitioners of these exercises:
their successful practice requires that you have had success with the preliminary exercise
above. Do not rush into the following practices, wait until you really have experienced
the results from the above practices and then proceed.

Expanding Awareness to Let Ego Permanently Out of the Box.

The final step in this entire set of practices is to become capable of allowing your ego -
your separate sense of self - to completely relax control over your consciousness, while
allowing the unwavering presence of stillness to become your consciousness. This sounds
dramatic, yet it is simply a relaxation of any and all control, of any and all want, and a
release of your thinking and feeling from the exclusive service of an ego. This is actually
a trade-in: you trade your false sense of a separate self for your true Self that is not
separate from anything. You are not separate from the Breath of Life, so do you want to
pretend to be so any longer?

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 After you have achieved point-periphery consciousness, what I have called
positionlessness in the heart space, as described in chapter one, it's time to slide down the
midline into your belly, bringing everything you have thus far accomplished in these
exercises with you. During your slide down the midline, your mind, and your emotions,
will provide you with hordes of stories, strategies, and very intense feelings of fear that
explain why you cannot, and must not, do this. Amid this cacophony, which is very
convincing, you have to choose to let your descent continue into your belly anyway. Can
you see how this can help you develop unwavering stillness? If you cannot now, you will
as soon you actually experience the descent.

Once you have descended down the midline, despite the pleading from your ego not
to do so, you will begin to experience the root stillness. As mentioned before, root
stillness is beyond description. It takes away all of your misperceptions like a thief in the
night, lifts away all that is near and dear to you, and renders everything quiet. Yet it is a
stillness that contains more life than you have ever before experienced. This is far and
away beyond anything rational, yet here it is. The main indicator that you have succeeded
in adequately soaking in stillness is that you are able to concentrate without effort in
silence, with ease, within any activity no matter how chaotic it feels; and you can abide in
all spaces, even no space, for as long as needed - this is abiding as unwavering presence
of stillness.

So, what is this really like, you might ask? Your awareness literally pops out of the
trap of the focused mind, and it transcends the lull of the ego’s bubble land - the wizard of
oz creation of the mind - and the defensive layers of your personality are rendered
transparent. Your perceptual awareness will gradually stabilize and become a vast empty
space of stillness that contains everything, yet is nothing but stillness that is aware.
Actually, it is neither nothing, nor is it anything. This space, which is not space, is not
composed of thoughts, images, feelings, or any phenomenon whatsoever, yet it contains
all of them, all phenomena. There is awareness as total stillness, total silence, total
emptiness and fullness, total space, and total peace, but none of those descriptors is
accurate. Stillness is directly contacted, and you bodily know it to be the container for

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everything that is perceived in the manifest world, both as perceiver and perceived -
everything is within stillness - and everything is thus totally interconnected as stillness,
even the separate sense of self. Because that is all there is. We arrive full circle:
everything that we are is contained in stillness, so nothing need be excluded.

I would like to point out that this stillness is the background upon which all
transmutation occurs, and your client will regularly report that to you. They will say
something like “I experienced a very painful emotional space during the session, except it
was different this time. I used to experience this issue with an intensity that was too much
to bear, and I always felt as if the fear was going to consume me, and therefore, I could
not be with it, so I avoided it. This time, I was able to witness it, be with the fear, and
embrace it as a part of who I am, and I could do this because of the presence of stillness.
It also became very clear to me that this stillness is who I really am.”

These are the basic exercises for contacting and realizing the five enfoldments of
biodynamic cranial touch described in chapters 4 through 8 in Stillness. My main advice
is to be patient with yourself: if you find any of these exercises difficult, guess what?
They are difficult, and yet, they will reap fruits in the form of a confident, conscious
presence of the heart. For some of us, it will take years, literally, to harvest the fruits and
stabilize this presence of being; others will begin reaping fruit immediately. It is an
individual matter more than any other set of exercises that I know of. The fruits are not
necessarily sequential either. As a rule of thumb, any exercise must be tried faithfully and
regularly for some months to bear any recognizable fruit. The key here is consecutive
days at about the same time daily, without missing, or skipping you practice. That is why
it can take longer for some, than others. These are cumulative exercises that bear fruits of
ever increasing depth over time - skills which are necessary as you continue on your
journey into the endlessly, ever-unfolding, timeless mystery of the Breath of Life.

In time, you will be able to modulate the exercises to match your own temperament.
It is similar to what you do while learning cranial techniques. First, you learn the
mechanics of how to skillfully apply individual holds. Next, you combine many holds
into one, then you start to make the holds up as the client’s system guides you to do so,

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and finally, the Intelligence of the client’s system does all the guiding, all the contacts,
and all the work. You surrender, and provide a body that is skilled in art of neutral touch.
Therefore, these exercises can also become yours entirely, until they become natural and
instinctual - what needs to happen in a specific tonality arises out of the wisdom that is
inherent in the moment - this is where true practice begins.

As a closing, for fun, try this exercise: go outside and sit in front of a plant of your
choosing, and observe it as you did with your chosen object. Then, close your eyes and
bring the plant image into your heart. Then think away the image of the plant in reverse.
Disappear the leaves, the branches, the trunk, the roots to the seed, until it disappears.
Then sit in silence with presence and notice the forces that are left in the stillness of your
heart. This sitting in imageless silence establishes a meditative state in you that is in direct
relationship to the archetypal form - the Image of the plant - that is the reality behind the
plant as it arises as a blueprint out of stillness. These are archetypal motility patterns, the
subtle realm, or blueprint level of the plant, that resonates in sympathy with your midline
- your unwavering zone of stillness in your heart - within which imprints the pattern and
form of the inner movements of the plant archetype in your field of stillness, and forms
the Image as an energetic matrix of coherence. When you next encounter the object, if
you hold back concepts, thoughts, and refrain from naming it, and sit in silence, then the
light streaming into your body through your skin, limbs, eyes, and other senses re-
resonates within the field of stillness in your heart and midline, which has previously
resonated in sympathy, or coherently harmonized, with the Image and its motility
patterns. This is how you connect the outer I-field to the inner I-midline in a rhythmic,
outer to inner lemniscate of motility; it is like a co-breathing of warmth, light, and love..
Light moves from out to in, and back out, in a vortex ring, a lemniscate-like breathing of
forces. This is precisely how awareness can know itself - in this case awareness knows
itself as a tree -- through you. We are, as created beings, all expressions of stillness.

Another way to characterize this, as I have mentioned earlier, is that you breathe in -
as frequencies of energy - the entire expressed world, while it spontaneously moves
through your heart and midline and circulates out again, and the cycle repeats endlessly.

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Ultimately this awareness constitutes the culmination of inner work that prepares you for
the depth of biodynamic cranial touch that has begun to present itself to practitioners.
This leads us to a glimpse of the exploration into spontaneous transmutation, which
occurs on the undifferentiated, or Pure Breath of Love enfoldment.

Because so many cranial practitioners in my mentor courses presently access the

world space that is characterized as the Pure Breath of Life (or more accurately, Love), I
am compelled to offer this to the community for feedback. My indication for this is based
on the reported experiences of several dozens of these practitioners over the last six years.
You may recall the Tibetan Buddhist method for absorbing the suffering of others called
tonglen; it is similar to the Christian concept of the Lamb of God that takes on the sins of
the world out of its pure Innocence and Love. Essentially, this process is the taking on the
karma of another, as is a tradition in the Guru-disciple relationship. In the non-dual world
space, the first expression of the stillness may be called Love. If you have developed up
to the causal level, the enfoldment called Dynamic Stillness, and then enter the non-dual
Pure Breath of Life, it becomes apparent that all form is an expression of the stillness that
feels like Love.

Therefore on the casual level - Dynamic Stillness - my own bodymind is no more or

less important from the point of view of this spacious primordial awareness than any
other expressions - which includes everything that is manifest. I realize that my ego as a
special separate self with some kind of individual existence is simply a relative reality.
That, from the point of view of the infinite Dynamic Stillness, my separateness is
functional and is only valid, as such. That is, it is a special unique expression, no other
like it, but ultimately, like everything else, it arises as an expression of stillness. All
expressions are just that - and stillness is always and forever one - unborn, uncreated,
without limit, no name, no form, no concept, no thought, no feeling, no thing, and not
nothing, and thus, everything else is also unique and special.

Therefore, from this perspective, since all expressions arise out the same stillness,
and I am that stillness, then, my bodymind is one of an infinite number of unique
expressions. The last step is to realize that everything is an expression of that same

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primordial awareness that I am, and therefore, I can freely allow all expressions within
me - be it bliss, beauty, truth, hatred, pain, suffering, rage, terror, good, or evil. I can
allow everything into the core of my heart and allow it all to breathe in and through me -
it is I, as that un-nameable stillness.

I implicitly trust the process of transmutation, and if there is no separate self that
fixates on any of the affect, as the suffering or joy enters my core, then I can become a
conscious and willing neutral portal for this event - like the reed flute that allows the
Breath of Love to play through it effortlessly and openly. So, let us begin to explore how
to live as the neutral ground, the portal that leads to a living, body-felt relationship with
the Breath of Life.

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 Chapter 4 - The Neutral and the Breath of Life

The neutral is so central to biodynamic cranial touch that we are going to spend
some time somatically feeling into the sense of a neutral, but first, let us characterize it.
Biodynamic cranial touch practitioners directly contact the potency of the Breath of Life
and realize how it transmutes inertial motion patterns of dysfunction into the life-giving
functional motion of health. You can sense this life-giving motion in the client as an
unimpeded metabolic flow that streams throughout the fluid body, or ground substance,
as a whole, and we call this whole-body flow, primary respiration. Potency, to do its job
of infusing inertia, transmuting it into healthy motion requires that a free space be
available as its portal for this infusion. That portal, as our neutral presence, dissolves the
inertial patterns of disease so they can return to their original free-flowing pattern of
health. The neutral is this space of freedom. The depth of a client’s neutral indicates their
level of trust by which she lets her bodymind relax into stillness, which increases her
bodily receptivity to the health forces of the Breath of Life. To observe when the intention
of the Breath of Life has been liberated within the client, you sense the point when the
client is most relaxed and receptive, and she has handed her egoic strategies of control
over to the Breath of Life. This proceeds in stages of ever-deepening relaxation: of her
body, then the soul, and spirit, and thus she permits primary respiration to breathe, or
infuse health, into the inertial areas without resistance, or an attempt to control the
sequence.

This neutral point of balance has a felt sense that can range from local tissue
buoyancy (body neutral) to that of one unit of graceful fluid motion (soul neutral) that
flows throughout the client’s whole body as a unit. You sense this as a seamless state of
whole-body ease and receptivity. This quality is the opposite of the mechanical feel of the
reactivity of inertial motion (exclusive identification as a body). So the neutral is the
point at which the client is so relaxed in stillness that she can surrender control and bodily
enjoy a direct response to the infusion of healthy motion with the least reactivity. The
neutral begins as a point of balance in the reciprocal tensions of the tissues as balanced
membrane tension, segues to fluid buoyancy, wherein the potency exudes levity that

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expands the space, and infuses the fulcra that liberates them from fixation to an free flow
of fulcra, which are free to move and shift as guided by primary respiration.

Remember, the midline is the fulcrum for primary respiration as it wells up, and
radiates out, from the midline, so the fulcra, which are freed from their twisted and fixed
spatial relationships, will naturally reorient to their original balanced and free spatial
relationship to the midline during this free flow. Also, since the excursion patterns of
primary respiration carry the blueprint for ideal functional motility, it will, according to
Wolff’s Law, create the precise structure that accommodates to the functional motion. In
other words, the Breath of Life expresses the original patterns of healthy motility as an
energetic matrix for form - this is the blueprint mold - that is responsible for the creation
of the physical architecture of the body.

This process of creating structure from an energetic matrix of form has a certain feel
to it. You sensually experience it as a textural quality of free, healthy movement that
floats in a fluid-like stillness. This texture expresses a tone that represents the precise
combinatorial functions of the whole: The tone resonates as the precise mix of surrender
between the client’s body, soul, and spirit to the Breath of Life. The tone also matches the
combined elemental (earth, water, air, etc) requirements needed by the Breath of Life to
precisely resonate with, access, and resolve the inertial patterns, all of which is
accomplished with a complete consideration of both the client’s personal health, and her
overall evolution of consciousness. We referred to the elements, at this body-felt level, as
instincts earlier in the last chapter. So this alchemical mix of the whole determines the
tonal quality of the neutral in the client, which culminates in a single textural quality that
emerges throughout the whole of the client. The sensual quality of these textures can
range from a delicate, ethereal, tender, and subtle tone, to a that of extreme strength,
density, or power. Alchemically, it ranges from ether to lead. Simply put, the tone
represents the precise mix of levity and gravity that is required by the Breath of Life to
match the quality of the inertial forces, either physical forces from a traumatic event or
personality layers resulting from emotional experiences that are present in the client. This
tone permits the most efficient infusion of potency into the inertial patterns in the client in

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the most integrative manner that is in consideration of the good of the whole without
overwhelm, or treatment reactions (Clients with highly defended personality structures
can experience a session as under-whelm: ‘was that it?’).

This felt sense textural quality, or tone of the neutral, also determines the inner
dynamic of your contact, so even during intense activity you can remain in tonal match
while the client is most responsive to the Breath of Life. To be in tonal match, is another
way of saying you are not in the way, over involved, nor are you too far away, or
dissociated. You are present as a neutral. When left free in this manner - when the
practitioner is tonally matched and he is not applying techniques or intentions, and not
getting in the way or disappearing - the Breath of Life can most fully permeate and
transmute the inertia into healthy motion. Conversely, the less tension, or resistance, there
is in the client, the freer the Breath of Life is to do her work. We talk about the client’s
neutral a lot more in Stillness, so now, let us navigate the felt sense of a practitioner
neutral, without which, a client’s neutral is just an idea.

Recapitulation of Neutral

The neutral in the tissues begins as balanced membranous tension, segues to tissue
buoyancy, and consolidates when the whole body fluidly moves, or breathes as one
functional unit in fluid tide. Then, there are sequences of neutrals in fluid tide - balanced
fluid tension - which integrates the defended layers of personality with soul. This
integrative process can take some time, yet it culminates when the fluid body transmutes
to potency, during a deep stillness, in which the potency body, or Archetypal Self,
emerges in long tide. In this unified consciousness there is wholeness and connectivity
throughout all levels, bodymind, soul, and a beginning contact with spirit. Eventually
after an acclimation process if repeated contact with essence, the mission of the neutral is
accomplished: the ego no longer resists the Breath of Life, rather she has surrendered to a
greater intelligence, which allows Presence to manage everything.

The power that made the body heals the body

The Breath of Life is the creative resource for the forces of conception,

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embryogenesis, immunity (self-recognition), identity or personality, perception, learning,
thinking, feeling, will, a felt sense of connection, wholeness, healing, and the evolution of
consciousness. Did you get that? That which sparks life remains throughout the entire
destiny of that individuality as the presence of being that pervades all the way into the
subatomic particles in every single cell, and radiates infinitely into the vast universe.
There is no place where this consciousness is not.

Abiding in your own neutral occurs when you begin to sense with your whole body,
as a quiet listening with your body felt sense. Your attention will naturally orient and
acquiesce to the tonal guidance of the Breath of Life; it is this disposition that provides
the freedom so the BOL can express health most fully in you without interference. As a
review: you sense with your whole body, first by relaxing your outward directed, efferent
attention that is centered in the head, and let it withdraw back into the third ventricle, and
then relax and let it drop down into the heart, the neutral position of freedom. Abiding in
the neutral heart is a relaxed whole-body felt sense awareness, or what Bonder calls
embodied feeling-witness consciousness, which, he says, comes alive when your whole
being drops into the body and rests in the heart. Even though you are no longer apart from
life or feeling - far from it you are one with it - you are also able to watch yourself as
though from a distance, as a feeling-witness. You are simultaneously untouched and
deeply in-touch.

Hypermasculine:

According to the difficulty you have with whole-body felt sensing, you discover how
conditioned you are by a hypermasculine disposition. The hypermasculine disposition,
coined by Bonder, is the conditioning that the ego has had culturally infused into it over
thousands of years. The masculine character vigilantly maintains and defends its
sovereign position as a separate sense of a self, as ego, and it tenaciously holds this center
of identity high up in the head, from which it can maintain control of, and thus can avoid
and keep at bay, the dreaded feelings that are lurching ‘down there,’ in the belly. This
disposition can be compared to pressing your foot down onto the head of the powerful
snake, your feminine primal power, which is forcefully held back and suppressed under

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the measured, icy cool control of the masculine consciousness.

A few of the countless methods that the hypermasculine employs to resist feminine
feeling and expression include: thinking, naming, objectification, planning, control,
alienation, separation, suppression, judging, extreme sternness toward the body, over-
disciplined, depravation, berating, authoritarianism, analyzing, dissection, diagnostic,
theorizing, and criticizing. The ego - the main agent for the masculine consciousness -
also needs to know, and has to figure it all out.

Therefore, whenever events do not proceed as planned, and it does not like how life
is going, the ego will change life by systematically employing techniques and formulas
that, at least conceptually, improve life, but which insulates it from feeling life’s harsh
reality. It may come as a shock to realize that your feelings down in the belly, even if
unpleasant and extremely intense, are the expressions of the Breath of Life herself.
Feelings in your body are breath’s way to communicate to you whether you are in
synchrony, or out of harmony, with her divine holographic matrix, or blueprint. If you
avoid, suppress, and control your feelings, you are blocking the flow of communication,
and severing your connection to the Breath of Life, and thus you avoid the guidance that
delivers to you your destiny. In essence you are avoiding intimacy with Self. Feeling and
sensing is intimacy with essence.

Therefore, avoiding your feeling sense is a form of being at war with yourself, and
with life: You let the masculine, rational part, control the feminine, feeling sensing part,
and let him decide what is best for her. Therefore, like a stern, all knowing, authoritarian
father, who teaches his prized possessions - his women and children - how to be right and
good, he employs punitive methods of control, so that they learn what he teaches. What
does he know? He teaches that the natural world is here to serve up all of her resources -
to the last drop - for our (human) benefit. And the world is a very dangerous place that is
filled with negative, evil forces that are not only hostile, but are determined to get us.
Therefore, you must protect yourself, by being vigilant, and constantly on guard against
these adversarial powers. It is dangerous and wrong to be vulnerable, tender, open,
innocent, and to trust, because that is what leaves you unprotected and exposed, and you

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will get hurt…and so it goes. This will feel familiar because this adversarial disposition
toward nature, and the feminine, is thousands of years old. Fear is so inherently part of
our world culture that we are mostly unaware of how deeply it permeates our psyche, and,
how pervasively it informs most religions. Tragically, we have also turned this same
masculine disposition in on ourselves, relative to our feelings, sensations, and expression
of our primordial inner feminine.

The way to relax this hypermasculine disposition is not by changing what you are, or
how you do things, that would be hypermasculine, but it is to recognize that how you are
is due to thousands of years of cultural conditioning, and the way out is in: relax into it.
We are utterly helpless here: No technique can eradicate this disposition of vigilance - it
is so much a part of the matrix of our cellular structure that we unable to trust, let go, and
soften. What is even more shocking is that this very disposition, the hypermasculine, co-
opts our consciousness in order to perpetuate its dominance. The price we pay is that our
evolution of consciousness is hindered. This is so insidious that it requires a new
approach. We need an alchemical path that will invoke the transmutative power of the
Breath of Life, so she can re-infuse our cells with her original divine Love. The cells that
contact and receive this Love will be liberated from the stupor of tension, irritation, and
inertia, and the inertial patterns that result, are transmuted to the free flow of life again.
Bonder says,

“When we know without effort any and every thought, emotion, feeling, sensation,
action, reaction, or event, that occurs is not in itself in any sense a threat to us, then that
very "value-free" conscious presence spontaneously permits and produces shifts in the
nature of what we are observing. Then, we are simply being Consciousness.”

Here are a few ways to consciously invoke this process of alchemy:

Relax into your egoic self-centeredness, and accept it as a functional necessity.

Relax into your vigilance as it is, and let life be what it is.

Relax into your strategies of control, and let life manage itself.

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 Relax into and let your sense of separation, incompleteness, and confused identity
just be here.

Relax into your perceptual center of operation that employs thinking in the head,
then sink into the feeling sense of your heart, and then let your heart expand into your
whole-body felt sensing that gradually becomes your guide.

Listen to life with your whole-body felt sensing as your awareness.

Permit yourself to descend into, and feel, what lives in your belly - knowing that you
cannot see how deep your aversion to this is, it is a blind spot, but you can feel into it
somatically as irritation, discomfort, or fear.

Live in not knowing. Trust your natural responses in the present.

Relax into not doing. Allow life to unfold organically on its own. Let life come to
you, do not go after it.

Wait.

Permit what is present to be as it is.

Rest in the SA node.

Trust the intelligence of life.

Be still and know I AM.

Many of the above suggestions may sound frightening, irresponsible, and naïve,
especially to an overly masculine consciousness. Even so, this is the way of the heart.
Unfortunately most spiritual paths teach the way of the head -- the path of ascent and
transcendence, yet now emerging are spiritual teachers who teach the path of descent, and
have kept the feminine spark alive, whose teachings ignite the heart’s flame the world
over. This is a reversal of the direction of world culture, and to step across this boundary
between the hypermasculine into the divine feminine is the abyss. We will talk more
about the descending current in a little while.

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 Self-care is important to practice at this stage, as you permit yourself to be exactly as
you are, right now. Permit in your belly every feeling, need, insecurity, lust, longing,
desire, sense of lack, brokenness, disowned parts, insane zones, anxieties, fears, betrayed
parts, loathsome qualities, undeserving parts, guilt, shame, hatred, and, permit your
infinite awareness, limitless freedom, vast compassion, unconditional love, implicit trust,
courage, strength, integrity, bliss, splendor, sensuality, vulnerability, tenderness,
spontaneity, and fluidity. Even though such relaxation is paradoxical, it will help you land
in the neutral of your heart. Here are some of the qualities you will notice once you relax,
and abide in the neutral of your heart:

Your knowing is now accomplished by your body felt sense, it is not thought,
and it seems like not knowing to the mind.

Your responses to life are instinctual, spontaneous, and synchronistic.

You are present in the now.

You feel vulnerable, shy, soft, and tender as your feeling awakens in, and as,
whole-body felt sensing.

You feel your cells come alive with consciousness.

Your approach to life, and your practice, is non-invasive and patient; you are
able to wait.

You are empathic.

You become comfortable in your confusion of identity, your sense of separation,

and feelings of incompleteness.

A pressure relaxes inside.

You abide in and as stillness.

This is a paraphrase from Neil Cohen in which he emphasizes the preferred

disposition toward yourself:

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 “When it comes to bringing the mind to the True Heart, to Awareness, there is only
so much that can be said. Philosophical conversations can only go so far. The mind can
take us only so far. At some point the ability of the mind to take us to the heart reaches its
end, the limits of psychic abilities reach their end, the limits of the intellect reach their
end, and love takes over. Soul intuition, the knowing of the heart, as a whole-body felt
sensing, becomes the Guide and the Teacher. The mind serves as a vehicle for a while,
then the Heart leads - the heart-mind - the Buddhists call it bodhicitta, the awakened
heart-mind of compassion and wisdom. So you see, I always repeat the same things
because it is what we need to hear until we put these teachings into full actualization, into
full use. Our ignorance and delusion gradually acquiesces to the wisdom of the Heart. The
Heart is where we abide; and it takes time.

“The choice to live in and for the Heart is made moment-to-moment, hourly, daily,
and weekly, until your bodymind becomes comfortable resting in the Heart. Nobody else
can ever do this for us. Nobody else can ever make these choice points for us. Others can
tell us we will go to hell and burn forever, or whatever, to scare us into being good and
choosing the heart. Nevertheless, the best teacher is to see the results of how externalizing
our attention out there to fulfill our needs creates the pain we cause others and ourselves,
and the suffering we create during our entire lifetime. Until one day, we look at the
carnage, the blood, the hurt in others, and ourselves and we realize this is not the way.
This world presents so many choices to be made. There is also the choice of the Heart.
Each of us will come to this realization, come to this choice point in our own good time.
Some of us will choose the Heart because our experiences of pain have finally broken us
down so far that we can finally feel the tenderness of the Heart, and some of us will
choose the Heart through wisdom, knowing it is the only choice left. Each of us ripens in
our own time. Nobody can ever do this for us. We can support and inspire each other. We
can walk together in mutuality and cooperation, but we can never walk another's path.
Making the deep choice to open to the tenderness of the heart and to permit the Breath of
Life entrance, that is the journey each of us has to make by our own will, decisions, and
daily choices. The world has many answers, many words, and many ways. Ultimately
however, we must find our own way by touching the center of the tender Heart wherein

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the truth is alive and waiting for our awareness to unite with it once again.

“One of the simplest, yet most profound practices, it may even seem too simple it
may not appear very profound. But it is a way into direct heart experience, a way to touch
and commune with the Center, and one gets out of it what they put into it. Allow your
mind, your thoughts, your fears, and your anxieties, to simply melt and relax down from
your head into the center of the Heart. Do not just visualize this, "feel it into reality". Be
brave and let the mind jump from its platform of alleged superior intellectual safety, and
permit it to fall down into the domain of the Heart in the center of the chest. Feel around
in the heart area; get acquainted by feeling and sensing to navigate the territory. Let your
feeling awareness go through the various layers of resistance, fear, and hardness. If it is
uncomfortable, do not bounce back up into the head. Just try to relax your feeling
awareness into the heart area and assimilate the experience. Learn about your fears, your
discomfort, your joy, and your wisdom, whatever is there, be with it without trying to
change anything. Just be humble in the presence of the Heart and try to feel your way into
Center. Do this practice; the jewel is here, believe me. Each of us must find this out, must
experience this for ourselves, or it will only be another spiritual concept in our mind, not
reality. So, use this simple practice. I call it The Heart Meditation.”

When powerful, uncomfortable feelings arise in life, or in the heart meditation, it is

helpful to know how to respond to them. Here is one example paraphrased from a Zen
approach to anger:

In Zazen, we learn how to 'be angry.' If your habitual response is to repress anger,
your health will suffer. If your habitual response is to vent anger, your relationships will
suffer. Do not use sitting to repress anger; do not avoid sitting because you are angry.
Zazen offers you a third possibility: the spaciousness to stay present to anger. Have the
guts to be uncomfortable.

When anger arises, you tell a big, fantastic story about it. This is called 'creating a
self' - a self that is right, indignant, hurt, fearful, and so on. Try, instead to experience
your anger as energy in your body, not as a story in your head. Your story is not anger.

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 The precept says: 'do not harbor resentment, rage, or revenge.' Do not cultivate the
thinking that says: "I hate him. She hates me. How can they do this to me!" Do not hold a
grudge. Do not plan revenge. Refrain from hitting with fists. Look deeply at the roots of
your anger - be unrelentingly honest: No-one is standing in opposition to you except in
your story. Immediately return to reality!

Your anger story is about wanting things to be a certain way - your way. Be wary of
'your way.' You feel resentment, jealousy, and attachment due to your story. When you
have hurt someone in anger, apologize sincerely. When someone offers an apology to
you, do not reject it. The Brahma Net Sutra says: rejecting apologies is a serious offense.
Do not encourage others to be angry.

Anger arises according to conditions. When it arises, things as they are, are
obscured. In the world of oneness, there is no anger. Anger arises in the world of forms
and differences. When anger is self-centered, separation increases. When anger is pure, it
awakens. Can you use anger energy wisely to cut through delusion and awaken into
Oneness? How do you do this?

To transform anger, you must see that your anger story is a retreat into thinking
mind. Your anger story is self-justifying; it fuels the flames of right and wrong. Why do
you try to fit the universe into your narrow view? Transform anger into discriminating
wisdom - see clearly what is without guilt or blame. Cultivate discernment.

I mentioned the descending path a while ago, now lets navigate this more
thoroughly.

The descending current of the Breath of Life is whole-body felt sense awareness

I mentioned earlier that choosing to allow, and be present with, your feelings in the
belly is a reversal of the cultural current; and, it awakens or regenerates the descending
current of the Breath of Life in your body. In his Tour of the Minnow analogy, from the
book Contributions of Thought, Dr. Sutherland describes the ascending current of the
Breath of Life as it rises from the coccyx and sacral well up the spine into the posterior,

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middle, and anterior cranial fossa to the third ventricle. Sutherland does not mention the
descending aspect of this process. The Breath of Life also expresses a descending current,
and the two currents are one. One of the primary functions of the Breath of Life, at this
time in human evolution, is to re-unite the two currents, which becomes your non-dual
perception. The descending current is rarely talked about because very few people have
reached the level of consciousness in which the currents unite perceptually. The
descending current will not become a perceptual reality until the ego reverses its
orientation from an outer, efferent, egocentric focus to an inward turning of attention
toward the heart, and by letting life be just as it is. Relaxation out of the hypermasculine
disposition is what activates awareness of the descending current. Relaxing the
hypermasculine disposition is a literal reversal of the current of modern cultural life, and
of the current in you - that is why I called this “crossing over the abyss” earlier.

The descending current awakens when you cease your reactive, controlling
tendencies that originate out of the personality defenses. Instead, permit the infusion of
the Breath of Life to descend into your bodymind just as you are, without your having to
be perfect, to get it right, or to develop yourself into a spiritual, or evolved person, before
you allow this to happen. The challenge is to relax and permit all your feelings - whatever
arises - because the infusion of this radiance renders transparent the precise aspects of
your nature, particularly those areas that you keep hidden, and suppress from yourself, or
try to hide from others, due to guilt, shame, or embarrassment. It is difficult to face,
permit, and relax into what you previously considered to be your deficient, broken,
fractured, inadequate, or insane parts. The list of your parts that have not seen the light of
day is long: the relentless critic, the insatiable desire, the pit of emptiness in the stomach,
the dark evil parts, the anxiety, insecurity, self-loathing, not good enough, broken, lazy,
weak, undeserving of love, success, or happiness, and so it goes, on and on. Even so, give
yourself permission to embrace and become these parts of you. Discontinue thinking you
know what is best, and cease trying to fix, or change, yourself. Relax out of all techniques
and methods (particularly spiritual ones) you have previously used to change yourself, or
to control life. This will end the war in you, which ends your war with the Breath of Life.
Once you have discontinued the war with yourself - with trying to deny, resist, avoid, or

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change yourself - and you have relaxed into and become synchronized with those
unwanted parts of your conditioned personality as you are, then, the Breath of Life can
shine into, and fully and freely infuse those parts. If they need changing, she will
reconfigure them according to your destiny, which is synchronized with the evolution of
your consciousness, and is aligned with your specific part in the divine plan. When any of
these unwanted parts arise in your awareness it means they are being infused, and
indicates that they are in the process of being resynchronized, so instead of reacting
against them, thinking that because they are present then it must mean it is time to get
serious and fix them, see if you can relax and witness them in a non-reactive way. This is
how you permit the infusion of the Breath of Life into your unwanted parts.

This permission is a choice point, and if it is sincere, the Breath of Life will take
over, literally. She will initiate her inherent evolutionary plan that is designed precisely
for you. Just like in a session with a client, this inherent evolutionary plan is very
economical. There is no waste, and you will not have to suffer one iota more than is
needed to realign your entire bodymind and personality structure with your destiny. Your
destiny is always in alignment with the divine plan as a whole, in fact, it is the divine plan
for you. Therefore, this inherent evolutionary process coherently matches and
resynchronizes your present life, as it is, with your destiny, and thus with the divine plan.

The Breath of Life is not other, it is your very own Self. It expresses through your
body as your feelings, as your sentience, and becomes your whole-body felt sensing when
you discontinue the war. I repeat again, if you do not permit your whole-body felt sense
to freely exist, as it is, then you are at war with yourself. Being at war with yourself,
places you out of synchrony with the divine plan, the holographic matrix, and this reflects
into your bodymind as guilt, shame, self-loathing, or fear of loss, and so on. When these
feelings become so unacceptable, they are then projected onto others, and onto outer
events, and the cycle snowballs infinitely. You can readily witness the results of this
disposition in our war-ridden world. As long as you are expending your attention on
fueling the inner war, you are using up the potency of the Breath of Life for that, instead
of for wholeness, health, and the evolution of your consciousness. It is your choice.

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 This paraphrase of a fifteenth century account from Zen master Bankei will
illuminate this point. It may help if you substitute ‘Breath of Life’ for what Bankei calls
the ‘unborn:’

“The unborn is the origin and beginning of all there is; no source is apart from it and
there is no beginning that is before the unborn. Thought has fallen one or more removes
from the living reality of the unborn. Because of the unborn-ness and marvelous
illuminative power inherent in the unborn Buddha-mind, it readily reflects all things that
come along and transforms itself into them, thus, it turns the unborn Buddha-mind into
thought. It is only our ignorance of the Buddha-mind, that makes us go and transform it
into thoughts…in the external world, we turn it into all manner of things and then we
become those things. You must thoroughly understand about not transforming the
Buddha-mind into other things. Therefore, whatever happens, leave things as they are; do
not worry yourself over them, and do not side with yourself. Just stay as you are, right in
the Buddha-mind and do not change it into something else. Resist the partiality for
yourself, which makes you want to have things move in your own way.”

I hope you can appreciate this view: relax, and this view will naturally emerge in
your perception.

What Happens as I Relax into all of Myself as I Am, and Leave Things as they are?

As you discontinue applying egoic, self-willed techniques to change or avoid how

you feel deep down at the core of your belly, and, as you let you be you, fear may arise
about permitting those parts to surface, because you think they should remain hidden. As
you relax into the fear, after enduring the intensity it will soften and you will begin to feel
those deeper feelings. Paradoxically though, you will also feel an inner tension relax -
since you now choose to not react, or fix your feelings, the pressure that you normally
place on yourself in order to become spiritual, or evolved, relaxes. You, thus, sink down
into your core feelings that have been avoided by those very efforts to improve yourself,
and they rise out of the belly and surface in your heart. You cannot see how deep your
aversion is to this process - it is a blind spot - yet it can be felt into, somatically, in the

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heart. This is often not comfortable! This process can range from being a very smooth
transition, to one filled with deep terror, angst, overwhelm, and inner upheaval.

How Do these Deep Feelings Express?

There are two main levels of these feelings: Core feelings, and conditioned feelings.
Core feelings manifest as: confusion of identity - not knowing what you are; feeling
separate or alone; and feeling incomplete. This deepest core layer has no story to it - core
feelings are a fact of existence that result when a limited human unites with infinite being:
when an infinite radiant presence unites with a finite human bodymind, these feelings
result naturally. In essence, this is how it feels to be what we are - a paradoxical being -
that is, both extremely limited, and vastly unlimited at the same time.

The next layer, the conditioned feelings, have biographical stories attached to them.
They are based on your life experience, and these may require professional guidance to
navigate them. Examples of these feelings are: guilt, shame, fear, grief, insatiable desire,
self-loathing, self-critic, feelings of rage, of not deserving, of being unloved, unmet,
unseen, not being good enough, or inadequate, evil, broken, insane, and so it goes. This
secondary layer is the specific map of all the wounds that you have suffered in your life,
which mysteriously, you turn inward and apply to yourself as weapons in the inner war -
how you treat yourself, and what is projected out onto others reflects how you were
treated. However, once you have identified these wounds, learned to skillfully navigate
your awareness into them, and can be present to, and accept your conditioning as who
you are, it is no longer a problem.

The core feelings, that I first mentioned, are the paradoxical fact of simultaneously
coexisting as the infinite and the finite, and it is necessary to recognize these core
feelings, to let them just be here, to relax into them, and become them. When these core
feelings become conscious, rather than avoided, then the pressure that drives you to fix
yourself relaxes, and your whole-body felt sense awareness stabilizes, which becomes the
presence of stillness, the permanent ground of your existence, and your ever-present,
unerring guide. Bonder says the core wound is not only something you merely

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experience, as an object to your subjective, registering, noticing awareness; you are not
having awareness of it, because it is precisely what that total awareness is made of. You
exist as it.

What Happens When I Relax into and Become these Core Feelings?

You begin to allow the being part of what you are to exist in your bodymind as an
awakened embodied feeling witness consciousness. This is a very tender, soft, and
vulnerable part of you that is millions of years old; it is known as the world wisdom - the
Sophia. This becomes stable as your guiding principle - as whole-body felt sense, which
guides you through the felt sense of tone. How the tone feels to you becomes a precise
navigation system - ‘yes’ or ‘no’. Once you acclimate to this new way of sensing, your
body-felt wisdom proceeds to lovingly re-parent your bodymind toward a full
synchronization with the Breath of Life. This transpires according to a precise inherent
evolutionary plan, which is based on your destiny that is in accordance with the divine
holographic matrix plan. As such, there is no undue suffering, or punitive qualities to this
re-parenting. It is precise, and you suffer the least amount of discomfort as is possible to
re connect to your source on all levels - even in to the molecules of your cells. In fact, you
suffer only to the degree that you either resist, or override, your felt sense tonal guidance.
It is, in essence, unconditional love coming back for itself, and that is you!

After you have taken the time to slow down, and become quiet enough, so that you
can sense the inner bodily tonal guidance, your bodymind will proceed to reorganize on
every level. This also involves continual permission to everything that you are, to all that
happens, and to whatever you do; you begin to stabilize as both a witness and a feeling
participant. This leads to non-separate conscious embodiment - and a full synchronization
with the Breath of Life. This is the conscious, bodily realization that the awareness, which
is infinite, and the bodymind, which is finite, are two aspects of the same mystery. This
leads to a deeper process of permitting, or rather, just watching in awe as the infinite and
the finite engage in a total love-union. Awareness of the descending current begins to
regenerate on its own. This does not end, and here is where the party begins. The Breath
of Life as your being now begins to thoroughly infuse your bodymind to its core depths

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all the way into the molecular structure of your cells - fully, gradually, and completely -
all the areas that you previously considered broken, insane, fractured, dissociated, feeble,
and useless. This infusion will continue as long as you exist as a bodymind.

This level of infusion is perhaps the most difficult phase to relax into, not change, or
fix, because it is here, that the most uncomfortable issues arise; the ones of which you are
most unaware, and afraid. Your permission continues to increase in subtlety, while you
encounter each avoided, or unconscious part. You have an opportunity to choose moment
to moment: Permit that to be just as it is, and let that be here, and that too, and so it goes.

It is common to revisit very painful periods in your biography that you are
thoroughly ashamed of - or you may visit areas for the first time that you intuited were
there all along, yet you were unable to access them - but there is a difference this time:
Before, what happened triggered you to react in ways that were appalling, causing
wreckage in your wake, even as you watched, as if you could not help yourself. Now
those same patterns are present, yet, it is not as compelling, or as subjective, you still feel
the feelings very intensely, but you are no longer compelled to act on them - this time you
are able to be with the feelings as a witness, in presence, while you fully experience them
without reactivity. Embodied feeling witness consciousness enables you to observe events
as if they are happening to someone else, even though it is you. In this new disposition, if
you do not avoid, or fix your feelings, but you relax, then the Breath of Life can freely
infuse those areas and can reconfigure the inertial parts of the bodymind, so it reconnects
to the whole.

As a practical example, suppose you had a very painful time in your life when your
feelings were so intense that you became emotionally unstable, and you could not be a
witness to them, so you reacted to them in ways that caused you to treat others unkindly.
Perhaps you were oversensitive, and blew up in anger at the least thing, and you were
downright irrational. Maybe your friends distanced themselves from you, leaving you
feeling even more afraid and isolated. Even though you inwardly knew better, you were
simply unable to help yourself. This is the school of hard knocks - not a very pretty sight -
and the above happens in some way or other to all of us.

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 Mercifully, there comes a point where you hit bottom, and you begin to make
choices in life so that you can accept and be with your overwhelming sensitivity. The vast
difference this time is that even though the same intensity of feelings arise, since you do
not resist them, you are able to bear witness to them without overwhelm, and thus you do
not react to them. It is this capacity to witness without reacting, as a whole-body felt
sense, that energizes the powerful alchemy of transubstantiation where inertia is changed
into life. You suddenly realize that your over-sensitivity is not the problem; it is the
resistance to your over-sensitivity that makes for the intensity that you cannot be with! It
is seeing your sensitivity as an enemy that you must eradicate, which creates the problem.

Is it a bit more apparent that trying to get rid of some part of who you are can
become problematic? That very sensitive part is your enlightened self! Each part of you is
integral to the wholeness of your being - nothing is inessential. The Breath of Life
unconditionally loves all of her parts, and just so, it behooves you to follow her guidance.
This leads us to relationships, and the exact same principles we just discussed apply
equally to the other, as to yourself.

Relationships and the Neutral

(Forthcoming E-Book on Relationship to be available in Fall 2009)

I remember a comment Adyashanti once made, regarding relaxing into what is, he
said, “When you have secured your own liberation do not get too excited, there are still
six and a half billion of you to go.” Which leads us to relationships: quite like what you
undergo personally, but here, you relax into the disowned portions of yourself that you
have projected onto others. Therefore, the same process that is applied inwardly, to
yourself, is now turned out toward your relationships. The same work is required, that is,
simply relax about who you think the other is, or ought to be; permit who they are to be
just are they are! Swami Prajnanpad articulates this very well:

“Unity with the other means to see, understand, and feel the other as he is. When you
see the other, you are free from the other. When I see that he is just he, how do I get free
from him? You get free from him when you say, ‘he is.’ Why? Because you have no

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expectations toward him! Now do you get it? One is free from him by understanding what
he is. Why? Freedom from whom? From my own mental creation, from the relationship
that I have forged in my mind with him.”

Swami Prajnanpad saw marriage as a particularly powerful litmus test of one's

development, because in it one is, “fully exposed...All one's peculiarities, all of one's so-
called weaknesses are there in their naked form. This is why it is the testing ground.”
Swami Prajnanpad: "Unless you are tested on the ground where you are fully exposed, all
those outward achievements are false. This is the point, and you have to grasp it
completely." Human relationship is a great wilderness in which humanity has hardly
begun to find its way. Developing more conscious relationships is an important next
frontier in human evolution. And this will require a capacity to marry non-dual realization
- which dissolves fixation on the separate self - with careful attention to personal
relational patterns that block or distort the free flow of loving presence.

This is full circle, is it not? In the beginning of this discussion, the neutral occurs as
soon as you begin to withdraw your outward directed focus, and let it abide inwardly,
while you allow your attention to drop down into the back of the heart, which relaxes the
hypermasculine disposition - then, you consciously connect to the loving infusion of the
Breath of Life through your bodymind. Now, in relationships you take that same process
and permit it to go outward again to others. The same process that applies to your destiny,
is now applied to relationship, as you begin the daunting process of taking full
responsibility for your destiny - this completes the circle that never ends. We will now
explore relationships more thoroughly.

A few of the primary requirements for healthy relationships are listed here:

1) You are able to live in the belly of your own aloneness.

2) You look to Self for your source for fulfilling your needs, and not to others.

3) You harbor no expectations from the other for fulfilling those needs.

4) You have a capacity for discerning between the other’s idiosyncrasies and

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 your own - if a person does something that bothers you, to discern that the
issue belongs to you, and it is not a point for changing the other.

5) You cease changing the other to suit your disposition.

6) You live in the present with the other, which means to understand the
impermanence of relationships.

7) You discern your covert strategies that you employ to use others to feed your
hidden needs.

Rudolf Steiner provides a good summary:

He says, as I paraphrase, ‘we must learn to sense with the whole body as a sense of
touch. In the head, if we let awareness recede behind thought, into the brain core, and
from there, allow our everyday thinking to relax, then our perception will expand over the
horizon to infinity - where it rests in stillness. When our own thoughts become still,
thinking is sensed as a cosmic activity that originates from beyond the body. This new
thinking, from beyond, is perceived as an activity of light, which weaves the archetypal
pictures - the original ideas of form - that weaves as waves in the world, like a refined
breathing of light. If this breathing focuses in on itself, then personal thought forms
develop into finished concepts and self-contained ideas. If you let your thinking freely
expand, and continue in waves, then cosmic ideas of movement arise in the heart. One
perceives this as the movement of life as it comes from the periphery. In the heart is the
feeling, yet when feeling is felt into, and one becomes quiet and still, one begins to sense
the cosmic life that arises out of feeling. Then feeling becomes the Breath of Life. The
fluids are both the source for the formation of the body and the touchstone for the ether,
which contains the forces of the Breath of Life of the cosmos. This Breath of Life,
connected to water, is the substance of cosmic forming. When this is sensed, it is a very
blissful feeling as the sense of warmth that moves as life in the world; this warmth gives
us our humanity - our feeling.

On a deeper level, even though breathing is the process of the lungs, and of the blood

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coursing downward into the body, it also rises upward from the heart as light, vibration,
and tone that expands in the brain and throughout the senses. When we breathe in, we
receive the life of Being arising from the spiritual world, and when we breathe out, our
being flows out into the world. Here go the waves of breathing: rising up from the heart to
the brain core, into the light, and the waves light up - light is everything that has worked
through the senses - ears, eyes, smell, taste, touch - all are breath upon which light is
weaving, waving, surging - like the sunlight on the ocean, sparkling through the waves.
Willing rises up to the head and becomes thought, and thought becomes will, as it
descends to the limbs - as light, as a subtle will activity. Willing is the movement of air -
the all-pervading cosmic life, and in the instant that we open to this, our separate self
disappears. This reverse of the kundalini is what takes place after one has opened
awareness beyond the ego, and connected with that which is beyond it.’

All of this precisely matches the levels of the cranial enfoldments that are described
in Chapters 5 through 9 in Stillness:

Cranial wave is the exclusive identification with the body, with a the nervous system-
based reactivity to stress designed to control life (hypermasculine). When this egoic
control of the body is relaxed in the neutral, it leads to union with primary respiration
and the presence of the fluid tide.

The fluid tide starts the process of giving permission to allow primary respiration to
infuse the feeling self, the psyche, or emotional body. When your perceptually separated
feeling parts join the whole, it gives birth to whole-body felt sense awareness (awakened
embodied feeling witness consciousness. When this awareness is stabilized as unwavering
presence, it leads to union with the long tide. Long tide is the beginning of the birth of
non-separate conscious embodiment, which initiates the full infusion into your entire
bodymind, which culminates in the complete union with the Dynamic Stillness.

Though limited in its scope, here is a quote from Jung’s Kundalini p 40-47 & 69.

“Purusha, the archetypal man is realized at anahata (in the heart). Here is an
experience of the essence of man, the supreme man, and the so-called primordial man.

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This is the first inkling of a within of your psychological or psychical existence that is not
yourself - in which you are contained, which is greater and more important than you, but
which has an entirely psychical existence. If you function in your Self, you are not
yourself - that is what you feel. You have to do it (life) as if you were a stranger: your life
becomes an objective life not your own, but the life of a greater one, the purusha. “It is
not I that lives, it is Christ that liveth in me.”

If we were to feel into what stage Jung is referring to, it would be what we discussed
above, with the infusion of the Breath of Life into our hidden broken areas of our
personality, and then, we are able to witness our lives as if it is happening to someone
else. This is the union with the long tide - I and Christ - and the beginning of the process
of union with Dynamic Stillness - liveth in me. This is how we can work with the
evolutionary map with clients. It is important to understand just how difficult it is to see
through the hypermasculine strategies of the ego. Here is one last illumination from
Almaas:

"This sense of self, the core of the personality, and the need to preserve and defend
it, that is the main reason why we see the realms of mind, heart, and body as if in
opposition to our essence. The personality, and its sense of self, is the particular structure
of these realms. This structure includes only these realms, and, if the realm of essence is
introduced into them, essence will have a disorganizing and disintegrating influence on it.
The personality will have to oppose this essence to keep its own coherence and survival.
Essence is the real person, the real and true self. The personality is called false because it
is attempting to take the place of the essence. The personality and the ego identity
develop to fill the void resulting from the loss of essence in childhood. So it is really an
impostor, trying to pretend it is the real thing. So, the opposition to the essence is really
from the personality. The personality will do anything in its power to preserve its identity
and uphold its domain. This tendency - or let's say, this need - is so deep, so entrenched,
so completely the fabric of our identity, that only the person who has gone a long way
toward establishing the essential life will be able fully to apprehend and appreciate this.
This need is literally in our flesh, blood, and bones, even our atoms. The power of the

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personality is so great, so immense, so deep, and so subtle that the person who contends
with it for a long time will have to give it its due respect. Its power is awesome. Its
subtlety is unimaginable. Its intelligence is limitless."

If you are interested, let us move on to the appendix and look at esoteric anatomy
and the chakras, which speak to the evolutionary function of the Breath of Life. We can
use these maps to help us determine where the infusion is occurring in a client, or
ourselves, and on what level, which may help us remain more present to the process.

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 Appendix

Esoteric Anatomy.

Note: My deep appreciation and acknowledgement: this section was compiled under the influence of
the perennial teachings from the Upanishads, Dzogchen, Vedas, the Yellow Emperor, Christ, Swami Vyas
Dev Ji Maharaj, Bubba Free John, and Saniel Bonder.)

According to the perennial wisdom, the center of the Self is the heart, despite that,
culturally, modern humanity maintains the center of self as the head. You can feelingly
navigate your heart center when you relax the control of holding your attention in the
head and let it descend from head to the heart. This can feel frightening the first time
because of the sense that you are in a backwards free-fall into a void. If you can acclimate
to the initial anxiety of this sense of free-fall, and to the insecurity that you feel as
confusion, while abiding in the heart, and if you continue to relax, then your attention will
gradually unfixate and your awareness will become free from the thinking mind. This
freedom permits a buoyancy in your attention. It now fluidly flows in response to events
that arise in the present; as opposed to using attention to control events to accommodate
to our needs for safety and security. What I am describing is neutral attention.

Free-flowing attention at first feels chaotic and disorienting, yet gradually it

stabilizes and becomes an unwavering flow that is spontaneous. This stability grants you
the capacity to abide peacefully, without struggle, in the heart. Once heart awareness has
stabilized it spontaneously frees the body’s lower feminine pole, releasing the bodily
current of the Breath of Life (known in the east as the Shakti). Once liberated from
control, the lower pole bodily current will rise, because it is no longer being held down
and controlled by a masculine attention that is exclusively focused on covertly satisfying
its own unmet bodily needs above all else. So, as the current naturally polarizes, it will
rise to the heart and toward the upper pole brain core that connects with the universal, all-
pervading radiance of the Breath of Life. The personal life current unites with the
universal Breath of Life, which is primary and prior to the bodymind, and is non-personal
as such, yet it both includes and transcends the personal. In other words, the universal
does not exclude, nor is it linked exclusively with the ego. Once you can abide and relax

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bodily into this universal radiance, your universal heart awakens. Your heart quells the
nervous system, which becomes non-reactive, or neutral, in which an unconditional
regard is cultivated toward your body, emotions, and mind. The ‘three’ unite, and
continuously commune, with the universal radiant presence of the Breath of Life. In this
neutral, you no longer react against the infinite expressions of the living radiance. Truth
is. It neither inner or outer, nor is it found by transforming your bodymind. Spiritual
methods that we previously applied to transform our self are seen through: we observe
and realize that all techniques for improving our self are strategies that objectify the
bodymind in order to see what is wrong with it, from which we develop a plan to fix its
flaws, all are now seen as separating gestures. These efferent activities do not unite the
parts with the whole, instead, they separate. You thus realize that ceasing all of your
efforts of transformation brings about the natural union of body, psyche, soul, and spirit.
Relaxation replaces transformation.

To relax, and permit our body to be in its natural state, allows us to be our instinctual
spiritual, human, animal self that has its own ancient wisdom that can be trusted - this is
what reunites the body with nature, and thus with the divine, and subsequently, it
becomes non-separate, or whole again.

When we cease to identify with the tissue body as an exclusively separate self, we
begin to sense contact with the soul.

During a touch session, you can sense the client’s body relax into its natural state
when the cranial wave, sensed as chaotic motility, segues to balanced membrane tension
that quiets into stillness. In stillness, the client reports that her discretely felt separate
tissues transmute to a unified flowing fluid. We observe this neutral (natural state) deepen
when stillpoint starts in one part of the body and gradually spreads to the whole body. A
whole-body breath-like fluid excursion arises out of whole-body stillness, which is called
primary respiration of ‘fluid tide’ (see chapters 5, 6, and 7 in Stillness).

When you cease to identify with your emotional, or psychic body, as an exclusively
separate self, that is busily immersed either in indulgence, or in avoidance and reactivity

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to your feelings and emotions, then its activity transmutes into unimpeded feeling.
Unimpeded feeling in the body is Love.

Sensually, during a touch session, a practitioner can perceive this as a fluid tide
neutral - balanced fluid tension - which leads to a stillpoint that begins in and spreads
throughout the whole fluid body while the fluid body transmutes into potency, and then
segues to a vast stillness that comes from outside fills the room, as it wells inside the
recipient, that eventually reveals to them a universal primary respiration called long tide.

Therefore, the body and the psyche relax into the heart radiance, then universal
radiance of the Breath of Life is transmitted to the entire bodymind as a whole. This
coherence can now be referred to as the Soul, which proceeds to unite the bodymind with
the psychic body.

When you cease to identify with your Soul as a separate Self, and you let it be
infused in the radiance of your awakened heart, then you are no longer identified as an
exclusively separate self, or as a Self of any type, and your awareness becomes
indistinguishable from any and all parts of creation.

Note: The practitioner senses this when the long tide stops breathing - balanced
potency tension - and acquiesces to the presence of Dynamic Stillness.

When all of the above is relaxed into the heart radiance, then all of creation becomes
indistinguishable from the Absolute.

Note: Here, the practitioner senses that out of Dynamic Stillness there emerges the
undifferentiated Breath of Love.

Encounter with Dynamic Stillness grants utter and irrevocable freedom from
reactive separation from all aspects and expressions of the Breath of Life, Consciousness,
and Love on all levels. All manifestation and experience is then in communion with, and
in relationship to, the radiance of the Breath of Love, as the all that is.

Here, all ideas and knowledge of reality is dissolved in not knowing. Eventually, you
realize that the entire bodymind, all experience, and the manifest environment are all

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stepped down expressions, and aspects of the radiance of the Breath of Love.

Summary: To transcend the limiting forces of an egoic bodymind, first, the

bodymind is awakened in the heart radiance. Then as we yield control, and we come to
rest in, and relax into a synchronistic feeling-relationship and receptivity to the Breath of
Love. When the bodymind is free of contraction, concept, image, objectification, and
resistance to the life current, then the radiant presence of the Breath of Love stands forth,
as all that is.

According to the oriental wisdom, the Breath of Life unites all the elements by
providing a link between the physical, elemental, and spiritual worldspaces - this ether, or
quintessence, is the fifth element - it is the silent screen upon which the four elements
play out the dance of creativity, or manifestation. All of the elements arise in this ether as
the radiant self of the four instinctual elements:

Form - earth - stability

Life - water - sensitivity

Sympathy - fire - impulsion

Awareness - air - attention - space

Love is non-reactivity to any manifest phenomena, which unlocks the nervous

system from its identification with the limits that are imposed upon it by cultural,
scientific, and worldly conditional thinking, and releases all five elements into the
radiance of the Breath of Love.

The heart is the universal center for this radiance - the still point. When you feel
into your heart, and you navigate it as the center of the total I - not just the ego - then the
ego relinquishes control, and thus relaxes into the radiant presence of the Breath of Love.

Bodily enlightenment is the process of relaxing into the heart all the way to infinity
(Dynamic Stillness), and back (Breath of Love). Your whole and entire bodily being
dissolves as a separate self-entity, then the life current is polarized all the way from the

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lower body centers through heart, and up to the crown, while the heart abides as infinity
of the not-knowable radiance, or Dynamic Stillness and Breath of Love. Here, the heart is
always awake under all conditions of expression, and all conditions are seen as
modifications of the heart as all that is. All is infused and permeated by the Love and
Radiance of the heart in all directions infinitely, minutely, and simultaneously.

When your attention feelingly inverts into the heart, divine feminine radiance also
rises upward from the lower body, and the outer plane of the senses into the brain core,
and the current of the Breath of Life is then coherently distributed throughout the entire
body. The brain core is the physical center that is associated with the universal pulses of
the long tide of Breath of Life. The heart is the location in which all the functions and
experiences of the higher and lower centers are integrated and made into a single
seamless coherent unit. The heart can permit utter relaxation into the infusion of the
radiance without the reactivity of your separate self. Ultimately, the whole and entire
bodymind is awakened as the self-abiding heart radiance, which is none other than
Dynamic Stillness expressed as Breath of Love.

The current of feminine radiance is subsequently polarized from base to crown, and
yields up its every separate part to the radiance upon the altar of the Heart: the whole
bodily being surrenders its illusion of separation at the heart altar, where every experience
of the bodymind, high and low, is infused by radiance in total unknowing.

This formless radiance of the heart is the whole body at infinity. This is the Holy
Grail. This true center of the heart is intuitively felt; it cannot be objectively seen by the
soul, because it is the soul. It is realized by relaxing all the reactivity as a separate sense
of the thinking mind and the seeking attention. When you abide in the heart and bask in
the infusion of its radiance from the Breath of Love, there is a corresponding feeling in
the back of the chest characterized as soft, tender, vulnerable, or raw. What is found here
is not an object of mind, or attention, nor is it an inward realm, a state, a vision, or an
experience. Rather, it is a doorway through which you can navigate feelingly to a body
felt realization of your true nature as consciousness that is prior to the physical, psychic,
and subtle structures of the bodymind. A consciousness prior to the nervous system, prior

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to all energies and forms in nature, prior to all subject-object relations, prior to all
emotions. The heart is the place that both epitomizes the I sense, and where that I sense is
utterly transmuted.

Your heart is Radiance of Love as its primary expression. The approach to this
radiance is in the heart-root, the SA node.

Exercise: First, invert attention back along the optic nerves, tracing it toward its
source in the center of the brain core, the native witness function of awareness. Then,
trace attention down into its root into the right upper chamber. Feeling navigate to the
back wall of the heart - the SA node, the native feeling-witness function of awareness.
Here, the radiant presence is revealed, prior to the witnessing of experiential phenomena.
When you feelingly fall into the SA node, the eyes of your heart open, which is already
and always awake prior to any and all divisions of self or other, expansion or contraction,
active or passive, left or right, in or out, positive or negative, male or female, high or low.

Once infused by, and awakened to, the heart current that is this prior radiance, then
gradually the awareness of your bodymind will no longer react, bind, or grasp at any
effect. From this disposition of non-reactivity (moving either toward or away from feeling
the impact of phenomena), the radiance is communicated centrally from heart to the
midline and then radiates universally from the bodymind to infinity, and back. The origin
of that radiance is not a physical point, or a physiological function, in the body - it is prior
to that. Nevertheless, the heart is the center, or the fulcrum, of this disposition of the
entire body relative to that current of radiance. Therefore, when the eyes of the heart are
opened and awake, the current of the Breath of Love pervades the entire bodymind
without obstruction, so that every aspect of the experiential self is included and
transmuted into the Absolute.

The movement of that process in which the bodymind is whole, and in a neutral
disposition toward being pervaded and infused by the Radiance of Love, corresponds to
the polarity of the bodymind in its natural state (health). Thus, the brain core (third
ventricle), which is positive in polarization to the body, is the first site of illumination of

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the radiant presence of the Breath of Love. The lower body is negative, and, thus, is
receptive to the brain, therefore, the illumined brain illuminates the whole body. But
actually, the whole body in its entirety is simultaneously and absolutely illuminated once
the infusion of the radiant presence of Love is feelingly navigated, apprehended, received,
and opened to - this releases the radiant current from any functional limits of reactivity of
a separate self-consciousness. The perception of falling into the SA Node, naturally
relaxing to infinity, and subsequently rising to the upper brain pole to the universal Breath
of Love, and receiving an infusion of radiance downward throughout the whole
bodymind, is only possible when the heart perception contacts and passes though infinity
and returns.

This entire process is perceived by the practitioner beginning in the cranial wave
neutral, which segues to the fluid tide, then to the long tide, and into the Dynamic
Stillness, which permits the heart perception to spill over the infinity point. When the
heart field thus returns, then everything becomes acausal - events are perceived to occur
in all dimensions, levels, rhythms, elements, and paradoxes at the same time - this is
characteristic of the undifferentiated, Pure Breath of Love.

To the degree to which you are self-centered, equals how separate you perceive
yourself to be from the heart radiance, in kind. If you are free, able to relax into all
aspects of the bodymind, and can enter into a communion with the radiant presence,
which ultimately enlightens the whole body, this dissolves your perceived sense of
separation into the wholeness of the radiant Breath of Love.

The structural site for this is in your center - at the heart SA Node - that epitomizes
the both the personal and universal as the whole body. The radiance travels along the
midline of the body, from base to crown, via the Cerebral Spinal Fluid and the white and
grey matter of the Central Nervous System, which forms the armature or core in which
the potency of the body is built. The descent of the current, during infusion of the
radiance into the whole body, begins from the universal radiance of Love and travels
down the frontal line that connects from the brain core down the visceral midline.

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 Both extremes of the bodymind - above the heart as masculine, and below the heart
as feminine - must be balanced and released into the heart. Only then, can the radiant
current of life pass freely to the whole and entire bodily being and transmute to Love.
Direct contact with Heart Radiance depends upon relaxing into the entire pattern of self-
divided dualistic phasing between the attempted domination by the masculine brain-mind
over the feminine vital sensate body functions. This is known as the war, or the argument
with life, as it is. It is reactive self-possession. Whole-body illumination by the heart’s
radiant presence is realized when the heart surrenders in the Love and Intuition of the
Divine, and awakens as the One. The primary faculties that awaken are heart perception,
as feeling and intuition of a whole-body felt sensing faculty. Through whole-body felt
sensing, the entire bodily being is able to participate.

Anatomical Details of Awakening the Whole-body Felt Sensing

(Please skip this if you are not conversant with anatomy)

As you fully relax your body into the heart radiance, your attention moves inward to
the root of perception in the brain core, and then revolves around the higher, more subtle
life manifestations of hearing and seeing, located in the superior and inferior colliculus.
Here, you perceive the subtle light and sound currents, known as shabda and nada in
India. This music of the spears is beautiful, awe inspiring, and enrapturing, yet as glorious
as these experiences are, these perceptions are still objectifications of the personal current
of life, which are prone to self-referencing even though these perceptions are very subtle
and archetypal. They tones may include visual luminous perceptions of archetypal
geometric shapes, and exalted deities such as Quan Yin, Christ, Buddha, Mary, and
Krishna. However, they are still contractions of the separate sense of self, be it on a subtle
level of Self. These are higher brain center phenomena, which correspond to lower bodily
centers for food, sex, and reactive emotions. This is realized once the independent Self
relaxes totally into the universal radiance, then a true hearing and seeing that transcends
subjective self-possessed gestures of sense perception, are brought into the service of
awakening of the whole body to the radiant presence.

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 This whole-body communion with the radiance, through the whole-body faculties,
are capable of unobstructed feeling and intuition, which pass beyond the limits of subject
and object (sounds, lights, and exalted deities). The mature practitioner passes beyond the
exclusive orientations to his own bodily experiences, his own mind, his own brain, and
his own psyche. He is released of all holding onto body and sensation, and brain, thought,
and perception, and of his fascination and enamor of an experiencing self. Epitomized as
unobstructed feeling, or Love, as the radiant presence of the formless heart prior to self,
body, brain, thought, and perception, both subtle and gross. She is awake as radiant
intuition. It is true seeing with a transparent eye - as whole-body feeling and hearing - or,
whole-body intuition that transmutes inner light and sound, and thought (separation) and
fear (antipathy), into radiant love.

When all our faculties yield to infinity, and return, they are infused with the Love
and intuition of the radiance that is prior to self consciousness (body, brain, sensation,
perception, cognition, recoil, contraction, reactive thought, speech, relations, experiences,
and suffering). When Love emerges out of this intuition at the heart, then life renounces
all of its objects, and the deluded self awakens to its true nature. This is true renunciation
of the senses, mind, and self, whereby the radiant current of the Breath of Love is realized
as whole again, free of all conditions, and which flows unobstructed in its passage from
base to crown. If the heart is awakened at the heart root of the bodymind, then all
separation is dissolved in the radiance of the Breath of Love.

This whole-body disposition is characterized as a free unobstructed feeling-intuition-

attention that is immersed in Love and utter communion. This whole-body disposition, in
which the root of awareness is in the heart, is also where the primal transition, or
spontaneous original modification, is made when life becomes self-conscious in the form
of a personal being. Therefore, it is here that the transition can be investigated and
transmuted into wholeness again. The root of self-consciousness, and self-definition of
attention as a bodily subject, is intuited and felt in the SA Node of the heart.

It is the subtlest center of the ether of consciousness. Feelingly navigating your

awareness of this point, with your whole-body felt sense, permits the higher brain and the

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psychophysical form to be infused by a radiance that is beyond a sense of a separate self.
When the radiance of the awakened heart becomes free, it emanates toward the great
center in the crown of the brain above the brain core, the Mahabindu.

The radiance then moves from Mahabindu to the SA node, fills the entire heart, and
radiates to infinity, while it simultaneously rises to the crown in a spiral coil, up and
forward. In the ascent, it rises up the midline to the base and back of the throat, and then
up to the base of the skull and then forward to the corona radiata of the crown. The form
of this radiance takes on the shape of an ‘S.’ It is shaped like the cobra. This spiral
radiance of the heart enlightens the entire brain, and from the brain, the light descends
along the frontal visceral midline and enlightens the whole body. To encounter this
radiance, you must open fully and bodily to it through feeling-intuition. The bindu of the
light is silent, beyond form, but it is vibrated from the lower bodily centers and radiates
golden, yellow, red, and orange from the left side of the brain. The higher centers on the
right side vibrate blue, indigo, violet, and green.

At the brain core is the five-pointed star that shows the origin of the bodily energies
that illuminates the brain like a crown that lights up the space to infinity - this is elegantly
reflected, physically, in the dural septa that support the brain, which physically the dura
mater forms that very star inside the brain core when viewed from behind. When the heart
breaks, and yields the born self and the whole and entire bodymind into the unborn heart
radiance, then the I is transmuted beyond all knowing.

Source of the Heartbeat

The ultimate identity of the human being is not a mind, entity, or object; it may
appear as a point of light, or a vision, but it is the infinite radiant presence of Love. The
connection between the infinite radiance and the bodymind is at the heart, but there is not
an independent soul in the bodymind, rather the independent soul is the bodymind as the
psychophysical covering of the free soul.

To intuit this infinite radiance of the bodymind, you intuit the SA Node, not as a
physical place, or as a visualization of light, but rather this infinite radiance is directly

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intuited feelingly and it is discriminated from a limiting self-identification with the
bodymind at the point where the life is combined with the nervous system - the pace
maker, the sinoatrial node (SA Node), is that place. The SA Node has an intrinsic rhythm
that is directly connected to the current of the Breath of Love, which is independent of the
brain, and all other functions of the bodymind. This is the life center, the seat of the soul.
Intrinsic nerve impulses arise in the SA node, travel to the atrial ventricular (AV) node -
the interval between the SA and AV node is where the heartbeat originates: From the
Breath of Life current to the SA node, to the AV node, to the CNS, to the bodymind.

“Cardiac muscle possesses an intrinsic rhythmicity that allows the heartbeat to

originate in and be conducted through the heart without extrinsic stimulation; none of the
components of the conduction system can be seen grossly, but their locations can be
noted. The SA node or pacemaker is located in the posterior wall of the right atrium
(upper right back wall of the heart near the spine). The SA node initiates the cardiac cycle
by producing an electrical impulse that spreads over both atria causing them to contract
simultaneously.” Kent: Human Anatomy p.452.

Third Ventricle (third eye) Anatomy

The pineal is traditionally known as the third eye, but the third eye is actually the
entire brain core. This includes the cerebellum, fourth ventricle, cerebral aqueduct
(narrow gate, or hole of Brahman), brain stem, diencephalon, pituitary, hypothalamus,
thalamus, third ventricle, pineal, corpus quadrigeminum (superior colliculus is the visual;
inferior colliculus is the auditory), optic chiasm, visual cortex, the auditory region or
medulla (mouth of God), to the temporal lobes. The pineal rests atop the superior and
inferior colliculus (corpus quadrigeminum).

Tour of the Breath of Life

The ascending course of the Breath of Life current begins in the medulla and pons,
cerebellum, fourth ventricle, midbrain, cerebral aqueduct, then the circuit rises up, then
down and forward to the pituitary, then back to the thalamus bilaterally, then back and up
to the pineal, and into the visual cortex.

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 Between the SA Node and the corona radiata above, the current of life is felt to stand
like a pillar (lingam) in an S curve. This lingam spirals from the SA node, fills the entire
heart, and then rises along the curved frontal line of the body and arches back to the base
of the throat to the fourth ventricle, up to the brain core to the third ventricle, then to the
lateral ventricles, and the corona radiata - one is reminded of the cobra, with its hood and
four teeth, which are the four corners of the clinoid process of the sella turcica - the
tentorium cerebelli is the physical structure that exactly reflects this hood of the cobra as
it attaches to the clinoid processes of the sphenoid.

From the corona radiata, the whole body is radiated with life current via the
descending current along the frontal-visceral midline via the autonomic nervous system
plexus also known as the chakra system. The white conductor material of the corona
radiata, via the corpus callosum, extends to the cerebrum and its higher brain functions.
When the radiant life current, as biodynamic energy, is fully polarized toward the brain,
all functions and perceptions are released from their objects and they invert and become
transparent to the radiance. Practically, this means you feel contained and seen by the
radiance of the Breath of Life, rather than an observer of it. The corpus callosum forms a
roof for the brain core, and the corona radiata infuses the white brain with life current.
The ventricles surround the corpus callosum and are filled with CSF, which provides a
protective cushion, and transmits the potency of the life current to the whole body.

Mystical activity occurs on the literal plane, it does not originate out of the cosmic
world of soul, but rather, arises from within the ordinary body of man. The key to
mystical language and religious metaphor is not theology or cosmology, but anatomy. All
metaphorical language is symbolic for anatomical features of the higher functional
structures of the human individual.

Take one example: the ventricles, which resemble a bird. The head and heart of this
bird is the third ventricle, with the wings as the lateral ventricles, and the tail extends to
the fourth ventricle. In the Hindu mythology there is the swan on the lake with the sun or
moon shining in the background. Likewise, in Christianity there is the dove that descends
on the head at baptism with water. The conch also is used metaphorically, and it carries

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the OM, the vibratory creative word or logos of life that creates all psychophysical
phenomena, and all experiences. The corona radiata can also be likened to the open
upturned flower, or the lotus rising from the lake toward the sun.

As you feelingly navigate each area of the brain, while your tour is intuitively guided
by the life current, various internal lights and sounds are perceived. When the current
stabilizes at the bindu-pineal (crown) awareness is released from the psychophysical
mechanisms of the bodymind. This occurs by the relaxation of the feeling-sense of
concentrated energy of the pineal, also known as the Mahabindu, which is just below the
crown of the skull. Illumination occurs independent of all limitation by the bodily
mechanisms. The entire body becomes illuminated by the spreading of the radiance into
the white fibers of the corona radiata, and the thousand fibers are enlightened. This is the
thousand-petalled lotus flowers, or the sahasar, the halo of saints. The corona is also the
hood of the cobra.

Blue light—Vishnu—Krishna—head, astral body

White light—Brahma—Christ—heart sacrifice

Golden yellow light—Shiva—Buddha, desire, navel

Absorption of the central white light, undistracted by all colors, leads to further ever-
increasing intensity of light experiences (Kirpal Singh), which culminates in the
transcendence of the perception of light itself. In the optic chiasm, the light array is a
yellow-blue-white circle, which is the combination of the lower body vibrations
(yellow/red) with the higher bodily vibrations (blue/violet). White is the combination of
all colors, the stillpoint of bodily energy. This stillpoint is intuited as the five-pointed star,
which is mirrored by our human outer shape of the body with the head and four
extremities (and the dural membranes in the brain core, when viewed from behind, form a
perfect five pointed star).

Finally, the heart must surrender and offer all these illumined experiences up to the
radiance. Even though they are ecstatic, awe inspiring, and seemingly transcendent, they

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are still objectifications that are between a “me” and the experiences. The heart must
break, and ultimately surrender into the radical intuition of the awakened radiant heart of
Love. This is different from an awakened soul and a purified independent Self. When the
radiance of the heart of Love penetrates the brain core at its root, brightening the total
brain, and entire bodymind, it releases all of it beyond the forms of sound and light into
radiant divine love. The life current of the heart radiates in all directions as a whole to
infinity; any motion that you perceive as up, down, or any other polarization is a
reflection of the motion of your attention within the life current; until the attention itself is
finally dissolved as a discreet unit into the heart radiance. God is the whole body at
infinity.

Summary: A current of vibratory radiance pervades and infuses both the whole
body, its life, and the light of the mind. You can feel into it, and identify with it, either
with the whole body (personal), or with the prior condition of the whole body that is
identical to the whole body, but not qualified by it, but only appears to be structured and
limited by the mechanisms of the gross body - and its principal location is the SA Node.
The outer and inner aspects of the whole body are controlled by the life current as an
etheric, electromagnetic, biodynamic energy. Conventional subjectivity and self-
referencing inwardness involves turning your attention toward the egoic expression of the
life current. Relaxation of all egoic identification of the bodymind to infinity, through
Love, awakens you to your natural state. When the structures of the body, brain, mind,
and heartbeat cease to define consciousness, then consciousness is realized as the heart—
the radiance that is prior to knowing.

Caduceus

The spine and brain core combined with the two petals of the thalamus that are
topped by the pineal represent the caduceus. The wings are the corona radiata with the
lateral ventricles (sahasrara). When the central nervous system is released from the
sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems - symbolized by the two serpents – the
ascending and descending bipolar motions resonate as a single current in the brain core -
male and female unite as one in the divine marriage of opposites. Then you are able to

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witness, without reactivity, the gross movements of the autonomic nervous system, and
the astral, subtle mind is activated and becomes capable of psychic flight, dream-like
journeys, intuitive reflections of all realms of experience.

At the caduceus center is a white brightness surrounded by a blue sphere and then a
golden orb. Sounds also permeate this space in ascending scales from deep humming at
the medulla and inferior colliculus, to tiny flutes in the temporal lobes. Is it heaven? Or is
it the body is in its primary natural state, where the heart is at rest, undisturbed, and
attuned to the current of life? One must literally inspect this radiance with your whole-
body feeling intuition sense, and not just mentalize about it.

To enter and ascend to the brain core, you bodily feel-intuit as a navigation skill, and
thus trace the movement of attention to the heart, in which you subsequently awaken to
the radiance that is prior to bodily consciousness into the consciousness in which the
bodymind is floating. Only then will the life-current expand beyond the brain core and
shine independently of any phenomenon. Only is this enlightenment, all else is experience
of the sense of a separate self, or of the bodymind that is intent on survival, and
maintaining its illusion of independence.

Enlightenment is not an experience, not a state of the personal bodymind in itself, but
is radiant stillness that is self-existent, where there is no separation, no difference, no
other, no self, no body, and no world. Outside of that, paradoxically, experience, other,
self, mind, body, and world are known only in that radiance. They arise only in and as
that radiance. Enlightenment of the whole body by the radiant presence of stillness
requires that the nervous system not react, recoil, or contract in on itself, but is free. If it is
not yet mature enough in its openness to the radiance, the radiance will not be free. The
nervous system must awaken by repeated and gradual contact to the radiance before it
becomes a vehicle for and extension of the Breath of Love. Then the nervous system can
tolerate an absolute infusion of the radiant presence where all its limits are dissolved.

The Absolute when manifest expresses as life, light, and love. All great masters are
archetypes that represent the awakening of the unobstructed nervous system in its native

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unconditioned state. Great teachers appear to us to serve the awakening and transmutation
of the limiting disposition of the nervous system. The soul is a temporary personal design
of the Over-soul, expressed physically via, and as a nervous system. The epitome of the
soul and nervous system is in the heart. The radiance of the atomic soul is here, as is the
nervous system that pervades the body and connects it to life. The whole body, when it is
expressed as an unobstructed nervous system, opens to infinity. The three chief centers of
the nervous system are:

Head—mental region above the heart—the higher, cosmic man -- the light of
intelligence.

Heart—primal center in relation to life via the nervous system—the center of the two
pyramids, uniting both, and forms the Grail altar where one sacrifices the limited self-
referencing bodymind consciousness to the universal radiance (See references to heart in
“Stillness,” and in “The Missing Glossary”)

Navel—vital region below the heart—the lower, bodily man -- will.

Heart is the primal center, the ultimate stillpoint, and it is the root of self-
consciousness. Self-consciousness is a recoil from infinity be it via the higher or lower
centers. When the soul awakens beyond fear and experience the nervous system relaxes
its recoiling tendencies and the radiance unites with the whole-body via the heart. Then
the utter infusion of radiance of the whole body becomes possible. This evolves into a
conscious breathing lemniscate between the heart, pineal, and universal radiance, and
pituitary and heart radiance. This breathing back and forth, of an infinite and unending
infusion of self-abiding radiant presence of stillness into the total bodymind and back to
infinity, informs and reforms in kind both our selves and the universal radiance. It is in
this way that consciousness evolves through us.

The heart radiance first infuses the brain at the pineal, and it moves to the pituitary
and descends to the heart, and from the heart to the whole body and to infinity; and this
cycle ever-unfolds. This infusion of radiance, when it is permitted, unlocks and awakens
the consciousness of every cell of the body and dissolves the reactivity of every thought,

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or emotion. The universal life, light, and love current is then established in a coherent
polarization from top to bottom, and back to top, as well to infinity and back.

Realizing this coherence is not possible through any transformative acts of your
attention, concentration, or contemplation, nor from an upward or downward turning of
your attention, rather, it is by relaxing into a bodily feeling-intuition that all attention and
experience is re-cognized moment to moment in the infinite space of the heart radiance,
which transcends and includes the bodymind. The true heart is not a place in the body, it
is the infinite being of the Absolute. When there is realization of that, all phenomena are
re-cognized while separation is dissolved into wholeness. There is only the eternal gaze in
the heart as a constant process. All obstructions, and all contractions, in the bodymind are
recognized in the heart, thus the bodymind stands free in the heart. The bodily current of
radiance spirals from heart to crown and from crown to the entire body. The heart is
naturally radiant Love, and by simply abiding in the gaze of the heart it enlightens the
bodymind of man, and all the phenomena of the world.

Realizing that all arisings are the expression of the radiance of Love is what brings to
your consciousness a hidden core felt sense of separation and reveals it as a misperception
of identity. Infusion by the radiance gradually relaxes this core felt separate sense, and
you ultimately become the radiance with no longer any diminishment of it either in
waking, sleep, or dream state. There is not even a noticing of phenomena, or of
differentiated experience - only the radiance as the only-ness.

Connection of the Brain Core to the Heart and Heart to Brain Core.

To go a bit deeper, the pituitary with the heart forms an integrated whole when
combined with the heart and pineal connection. Warmth, that descends from the head in a
descending current to the heart by the pituitary, contains the buddhi forces that warm cool
thinking and transforms them into heart thinking, as primal animal body logic. The
pituitary eventually develops into a conscious organ that produces warmth that descends
to the heart, which receives this warmed thinking. There is yet another connection in
reverse: the heart radiance, which infuses the blood with light of spirit, emanates upward

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to the brain core to the pineal gland, which is connected to the universal radiance and
together the spirit is made human by the warmth from the pituitary-heart connection.

Here again is part of the earlier Steiner paraphrase, which I have modified for greater
clarity:

‘On a deeper level, even though breathing is the process of the lungs, and of the
blood coursing downward into the body, there is a breath that also rises upward from the
heart as light, vibration, and tone that expands in the brain and throughout the senses.
This is a lemniscate of breath from the universal to the personal: inspiration, we receive
the infusion of the life of Being arising from the spiritual world; and expiration our being
flows out into the whole-body and the world. These waves of breathing to and fro, rise up
from the heart to the brain core, into the light, and the waves light up (light is everything
that has worked through the senses - ears, eyes, smell, taste, touch - all are breath upon
which light is weaving, waving, surging) like the sunlight on the ocean, sparkling
through the waves. Willing rises up from the lower bodily pole through the heart to the
head and becomes warmed thought, and warmed light of thought descends to the lower
bodily pole and becomes will, as it descends to the limbs - as light, as a subtle will
activity. Willing is now the movement of air as an all-pervading cosmic life, and in the
instant that we open to this, our separate self disappears. This reverse of the kundalini
takes place after one has opened awareness beyond the ego, and connected with that
which is beyond it.’ (For details see the paraphrase from Rudolf Steiner, on page 74-75).

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The Chakras: Positive and Negative Polarity, and the Infusion of the Breath of Life.

Now that we have a little background in the esoteric and classical anatomy, combined
with what we know about the infusion of the Breath of Life on each level of neutral, we
can inquire into precisely where the client is negotiating her surrender with regards to
allowing the Breath of Life to freely express herself - as Love. In other words, where in
the client is Love asking to be received? If you are not familiar with the chakra system, it
may behoove you to study how they operate. The chakra is an area of concentrated
soamto-psychic-spiritual tonality that is influenced by positive energy resonance
(masculine, upper, right, front, external, sympathetic nervous system) and negative
energy emanation (feminine, lower, left, back, internal, parasympathetic nervous system)
and there is the balance (neutral, central channel, midline, SA Node).

If our attention is over masculine dominated, that polarity will shift as we orient
toward the feminine with the help from an infusion by the Breath of Life to a more
balanced disposition. When a client demonstrates a difference in the way they normally
navigate issues, from a masculine approach to a feminine one the amount of change in
their “normal pattern” can be used to evaluate the polar reversal process in the client’s
journey. In other words the degree of their navigational shift from masculine to feminine
depicts the degree of reorganization, resynchronization, and balance with the Breath of
Life. Now let us peruse the chakra system.

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 FIRST or ROOT CHAKRA

Muladhara Chakra—Pelvic Plexus

Also known as Base Chakra or Coccygeal Plexus. Muladhara means Foundation.

Location: Apex of the spine at the coccyx. The tip of the sacrum. The region
between the anus and genitals.

Main Themes: Physical body, grounding—this is who I am, structure. Matters

related to earth and survival. A felt sense of trust with the earth, with oneself and others.
Felt connections to family, tribe, race, and society. Individuality and individuation. Will,
power, and vitality. The ability to manifest. Will to live.

Physiological Functions: Governs the functioning of the kidneys and spinal column.
The vital breath of Apana (downward moving energy; removes waste material from
body).

Psychological/Spiritual Qualities and Life Lessons: The seat of the coiled

Kundalini or serpent power, the vital Life-Force energy or Shakti. The dynamic core of
primal energy, force, and power; the grand human potential. The foundation and root of
our physical and psychological being, which holds our primal attitudes and behaviors.
The root of the awareness of divinity in a human. Our roots, our inherited, genetic family,
tribal/racial or social attitudes, beliefs and behavioral patterns. Where one’s Spirit is
rooted into physical reality. Individual consciousness coming into human form and
physical birth; associated with one's Inner infant and infantile need (also see Grof’s birth
matrix).

Matters relating to the physical world: self-preservation, instinct, basic survival

issues. Trust in life, in self, others, trust in the Mother (earth or physical mother). Physical
and personal power. The ability to initiate movement, to bring one's needs and desires
into manifestation. The seat of the will-to-be and the will to live. Channels for infusing
the Life Force into the physical body giving it strength and vitality. Acceptance of self.
The ability to be patient, steady, and consistent in one's life and personal endeavors. The

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ability to wait. The ability to manifest one's personal needs and desires in physical level
reality. Groundedness, individuality, stability, structure, solidity, firmness, order,
cohesiveness, resistance, inertia, vigor, and stamina. A sense of inner security, safety,
stillness, health, and courage. This chakra is where the divine creative power has entered
the element of earth; the power of heaven has come into the earth offering an opportunity
for the expansion of one's experience and awareness.

Awakened Potentials: Feeling completely supported by life. Trusting life and one's
experience in the body. Understanding and respecting the earth element, one's
physical/material roots, and support. Experiencing a healthy and balanced delight in the
physical body and its pleasures. Potential mastery of the physical body. When developed
properly the energy of this chakra can manifest itself as one's dedication to selfless
service.

Possible Emotional/Mental Imbalances: Not able to fully experience one's

personal power or initiative and channel it constructively. Unable to break away and
individuate from inherited family, tribal/racial or social attitudes, beliefs and behavior
patterns. Out of touch with one's roots, with nature, loss of contact with earth element.
Denial of the physical body needs. A consciousness of lack; an inability to believe one
can have. Attachment, clinging, grasping, and hoarding. Too much emphasis or concern
placed upon one's physical survival, finances, possessions, material comfort, and/or
security. An inner sense of powerlessness which can result in: an overcompensated need
to exert power or control over others; feelings of being overpowered by someone or
something outside oneself; a need to possess others or objects; an urge to dominate,
manipulate, or destroy. Feelings of being overwhelmed by the intensity of life. Feelings
of alienation or separation. Unable to deal responsibly with the basic details of daily life.
Restlessness, inability to focus upon a given task, a lack of patience, stability,
groundedness, and consistency. Self-centeredness, fear, insecurity, frustration, anger.
Violence, greed, and delusion. Too much inertia or lethargy. No desire to change or
expand one's consciousness.

Possible Physical Imbalances: Tension in the spine. Lower back pain. Sciatica.

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Constipation, or rectal problems. Problems with the bones, legs and/or knees. Eating
disorders.

Pathways for Healing and Balancing: Learn ways to ground, to feel safe and
comfortable in the body. Work with healing issues/traumas from birth and infancy. Get in
touch with, welcome, and bond with the Inner Infant. Pursue the necessary healing work
for supporting personal individuation, growing away from, and transcending the limited,
confining attitudes, beliefs and behaviors of family, tribe/race, and society. Bodywork,
rebirthing and/or emotional healing work can help to resolve and heal birth traumas and
emotional issues stored in this chakra (and all chakras). Movement and dance. Hatha
Yoga. Cultivate a consistent spiritual practice, which supports union with your Essential
Self.

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 SECOND or NAVEL CHAKRA

Svadhisthana Chakra—Mesenteric Ganglion

Also known as the Sacral Plexus, Sacral Chakra or Splenic Chakra.

Svadhisthana means Dwelling Place of the Self.

Location: Base of the lumbar spine. Lower abdomen in the region between the pubic
bone and the navel.

Main Psychological Themes: The inner movement, flow, and expression of one's
emotionality, sensuality, passion, and sexuality. Physical/emotional needs, desires,
feelings, pleasure, and fantasy. The Inner Child. The inspiration to create. Self-
acceptance, self-worth. Intimacy with others. Well-being, physical vitality. Abundance,
prosperity. Family, social contacts. Change, movement, fluidity. Tolerance, acceptance,
trust.

Related Glands/Organs/Areas of the Body: Ovaries/Testicles. Genitals, prostate,

womb, spleen, bladder, sacrum, hips, knees, lower back.

Physiological Functions: Governs the activity of the reproductive system.

Procreation, assimilation of food, circulation, physical force, energy and vitality. The vital
breath of Upana, the upward moving energy, drawing in the Life Force.

Psychological/Spiritual Qualities and Life Lessons: The main center of one's

personality. The inspiration to move, experience and create. One's relationship with, and
expression of feeling, desire, need, sensation, pleasure, empathy, sexual/passionate love,
nurturance. In this chakra one learns to feel, embrace, and come into loving acceptance of
their emotional self (feelings, needs, desires, the Inner Child). One comes into
relationship and union with their own humanness. From the focus on self in the first
chakra, here one comes into the experience of and attraction toward other. A desire for,
and movement toward others; duality, polarity. Primary interpersonal relationships. The
ability to feel, to trust, to give and receive intimacy with others. Imagination, desires,

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fantasies of a sensual nature. Establishing healthy levels of self-acceptance, self-worth
and emotional boundaries. One's relationship to money and abundance. This chakra is
associated with the Inner Child, its needs, feelings and perceptions. Realm of the
unconscious, the deep emotional waters of the psyche. Establishing a healthy balance
between the extremes in one's life. One's physical health, vitality and well-being. Family
and social relationships. The ability to assimilate new feelings, experiences and ideas.

Awakened Potentials: An awakened, healthy, and responsible flow of one's

emotionality, sensuality and sexuality through one's body. Sensuality and sexuality
becomes an expression of love and intimacy, and is expressed in a responsible and
discerning manner from the heart in a deep, intimate, sweet, gentle and loving way. The
ability to trust, let go, and come into acceptance of what is. The ability to move, change
and flow with life's circumstances. The ability to interact, share and work intimately,
creatively and harmoniously with others. Having healthy boundaries without losing sense
of one's self. A strong sense of self-acceptance, emotional balance, well-being, and
physical vitality. The ability to use creative/sexual energy for refined artistic and spiritual
pursuits. One is able to be still and peaceful within self. Feelings of deep satisfaction.
Inner feelings of security and abundance; a deep inner trust that there is always enough.
An inner understanding of life's many cycles. A healthy, developed and loving
relationship with one's own feelings, needs and desires (the emotional self/human
self/Inner Child).

Possible Mental/Emotional Imbalances: Lack of acceptance and love for one's

emotional self, one’s Inner Child, one's basic feelings and needs. An imbalance in one's
ability to give and receive. Fear of intimacy. Blocking or repressing one's feelings,
desires, sensations, sensitivity. Over-identification with the physical body. Extreme
behavior (suppression or over-indulgence) in relation to food, sex or pleasure in general.
Irresponsible pursuit of sensual/ sexual gratification. Misuse or misunderstanding of
sexual energy. Using sex as a way to control, manipulate, gain security, or artificially
inflate one’s self-esteem. Feelings of lack of being insufficient, or inadequate. Feeling
that who one is, and what one has, is not enough. Greed, jealousy, or envy can occur as an

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over-compensation for one's inner feelings of lack and inadequacy. Manipulation,
possessiveness, attachment or deceit, as ways of getting what one desires. Fear of change,
lacking the fluidity to flow with life's ever-changing circumstances. Feelings of
emptiness, purposelessness, victim-hood.

Rigidity, confusion, lethargy, restlessness. Lack of humor. Possible addictions (from

inner feelings of lack and separateness). Sexual difficulties (impotence or frigidity) as a
result of repressed emotional/sexual issues.

Possible Physical Imbalances: Uterine, bladder or kidney problems, stiff lower

back. Sexual difficulties.

Pathways for Healing and Balancing: Inner child work. Get in touch with the
abandoned or rejected Inner Child, the Feeling/Emotional Self. Learn to listen to, support
and nurture the Inner Child rather than repress, judge, reject, or punish this child. Learn
how to respect and nurture one's humanness rather than judge and repress it. Explore
healthy outlets for the expression of emotion/feeling, creativity, passion and sensuality.

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 THIRD or SOLAR PLEXUS CHAKRA

Manipura Chakra—Celiac Plexus

Think about right use and exertion of energy.

Manipura means City of Gems or The Gem Center.

Location: Solar plexus, area between the navel and base of sternum (breast bone).

Main Themes: Personal power, will, authority, purpose. Exertion of energy. Self-
confidence, self-worth, self-respect, humor. Personal boundaries, discrimination, and
discernment. Metabolism and assimilation of food as well as new experiences and ideas.
Transformation of the Intellect.

Related Glands/Organs/Areas of the Body: Pancreas, adrenals, muscles.

Physiological Functions: Governs the action of the stomach (digestive processes),

liver, gallbladder and sympathetic nervous system. Metabolism. Radiates and distributes
energy throughout the body/mind system. The vital breath of Samana which governs
chemical processes, digestion, assimilation.

Psychological/Spiritual Qualities and Life Lessons: The fluidity of the water

element in the second chakra takes the form of practicality here in the third chakra; one's
fantasies are brought into practical forms, one develops the power to discern, command,
and organize. The seat of one's ego, power drives, and social identity in the world. The
seat of the emotions. Clearing-house for all energies below the diaphragm before they are
transferred to the centers above. Astral or emotional force, lower psychic abilities from
the astral/emotional planes. Desire, touch, personal power and will, authority, self-
confidence, action and energy. Self-control and potential for the mastery of desire and
motivation by lower passions. Breaking free of constriction, overcoming inertia and
lethargy. Motivation, action, activation, radiance, warmth, awakening, transformation,
humor, and laughter. To balance this chakra one must have the desire and the ability to
serve others selflessly, free of desire for recognition, reward, or compensation.

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 Awakened Potentials: True power and authority from within, based upon one's
knowing of Self. The right and loving use and exertion of one's power and will. A sense
of self-worth based upon an inner knowing of Self, rather than being dependent upon
external factors such as beauty, wealth, occupation, social or religious status. One
achieves control over speech and expresses ideas clearly and effectively. Joy, laughter,
and harmony. Selfless service. Illumination.

Possible Mental/Emotional Imbalances: Taking in more than one can assimilate

and utilize (physically, emotionally, or mentally). Caught up in, or over-identified with,
the lower psychic abilities of the astral planes. Too much emphasis placed upon pursuits
of power or gaining personal recognition. Pride, vanity, and overly controlling.
Competition or power struggles with others. The pursuit of self-centered goals and
ambitions. Possible abuse of power. A lack of enthusiasm for life. An overcompensated
need for external stimulation to feel alive. Overly intellectual or mental at the expense of
one's instincts, needs, feelings or intuition. Fear, cowardice, lack of confidence. Anger,
hate, impulsiveness, rashness, violence. Passions are out of control. Blocking the
movement of feeling/emotion from coming up to the heart and a tendency toward being
judgmental, critical, and/or controlling of those feelings and of others. Creating separation
and/or opposition, out of an unconscious need to uphold one's illusion of power or trying
to prove one's self worth. Giving one's power away to external "authority figures." Lack
of healthy boundaries, negative vulnerability. Lack of strength and vitality, and fatigue.
Inability to relax and slowdown; always pushing forward or outward.

Possible Physical Imbalances: Digestive problems, ulcers, problems with the

pancreas, liver, gallbladder, and stomach. Addiction to stimulating substances.

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 FOURTH or HEART CHAKRA

Anahata Chakra

Also known as the Cardiac Plexus.

Anahata means Unstruck (sound beyond the realms of the physical senses).

Location: Between the shoulder blades, in the center of the chest, at the region of
the heart.

Main Themes: The place where infinite spirit and matter, the upper and lower
chakras, as well as the masculine and feminine poles coexist without issue.

Related Glands/Organs/Areas of the Body: Thymus gland, heart, circulatory

system, arms, hands, and lungs.

Physiological Functions: Governs the heart, blood and circulatory system. Vitalizes
the vagus nerve (the largest nerve in the parasympathetic nervous system). Energizes the
blood and physical body with the Life Force. The vital breath of Prana which controls
breathing and inflow of the Life-Force.

Psychological/Spiritual Qualities and Life Lessons: The seat of the Soul; where
the Life Force of the Higher Self is anchored into the body. The doorway of love and
wisdom. The place of one’s conscience, the Inner Guide or Guru. The seat of balance
within the body. Governs the radiation and energy flow of love coming from one's soul
out into the world. Divine, unconditional love, selfless service and compassion.
Inclusiveness, synthesis, and group consciousness. A sense of oneness with Self, others,
and life. Love for humanity. The joy of and the delight of self-existence. The pure and
unconditional joy of giving and sharing the expression of Self. The union/blending of
male and female energies within one's own being. Faith, devotion, and forgiveness. A
deep sense of compassion, understanding and acceptance toward oneself and others.
Balance, peace, openness, harmony, and contentment. When one lives their life in
harmony with universal love, and is able to be truthful, the flower of the heart chakra

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opens, expands, and grows. When, however, one's giving of love is impure or selfish, or
one is unable to be truthful, the opening of the heart chakra is greatly delayed and
obstructed.

Awakened Potentials: Attainment of balance between the three chakras below the
heart and the three chakras above it. One is aware, sensitive, and always full of
inspiration. Purity, innocence, and happiness. Detached from the cares of the world. One
is no longer concerned with worldly pleasures, honors, or humiliations; desire ceases to
be a problem. Living in harmony with the internal and external worlds. Transcendence of
the illusion and limitation of time. Inspired art, music, poetry, and writing. Selfless
spiritual devotion. Refined balance in body and psyche. Perception of Divine Grace
within all existence. One's life becomes a source of inspiration for others.

Possible Mental/Emotional Imbalances: Repression of love. Emotional instability,

out of balance with life. Moving between extremes. Overly concerned with self. Feelings
of separateness from others and life itself. Restless wandering. Lack of concern for the
larger evolutionary picture (group consciousness). Misplaced devotion and/or affections;
either physical, emotional, or spiritual in nature. Unhealthy, or inappropriate projection of
love onto others; trying to retrieve one's own lack of self-love from external sources.

Possible Physical Imbalances: Heart and circulation problems.

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 FIFTH or THROAT CHAKRA

Visuddha Chakra—Cervical Plexi (superior, middle, inferior)

Also known as the Laryngeal or Carotid Plexus.

Visuddha means Pure.

Location: Behind the throat at the level of the medulla oblongata. Other sources say
region of the C7/first dorsal vertebra at the base of the neck. Where the soft indentation in
the throat is located.

Main Themes: Expression of you truth, creativity, and gifts to the world.

Physiological Functions: Governs the lungs, vocal and bronchial apparatus, and
alimentary canal. The vital breath is Udana, which carries air up through the head
assisting the production of sound.

Psychological/Spiritual Qualities and Life Lessons: Controls the principle of

sound/vibration, speech, and communication. In this chakra supreme reasoning
overcomes the emotions and passions of the heart. Clarity in thought and speech. Power
of the spoken word, true communication; using the spoken word as an effective tool for
the communication of love, truth, and wisdom. Creative expression in speech, writing,
and the arts. Higher creative faculties. Transcendence of the reliance upon just the five
physical senses. Integration of the soul and the personality. Peace, truth, knowledge,
wisdom, loyalty, honesty, reliability, gentleness.

Awakened Potentials: The voice becomes sweet, melodious, and pure; it penetrates
to the heart of the listener. A deep understanding of the power and significance of sound
and vibration. Higher knowledge and intuition, improvisation, and wit. Supreme
reasoning supersedes the emotions of the heart. Understanding of the hidden messages in
dreams.

Possible Mental/Emotional Imbalances: Communication and/or speech problems.

Lack of mental clarity. Overly intellectual. Illusions and self-deception. Knowledge

used unwisely, ignorance, lack of discernment, depression.

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 Possible Physical Imbalances: Thyroid problems, metabolism out of balance.
SIXTH or BROW CHAKRA

Ajna Chakra—3rd Ventricle & Brain Core

Also know as the Medulla Plexus or Third Eye Chakra.

Ajna means Command, Authority, Unlimited Power.

Location: Center of the forehead between the eyebrows.

Related Glands/Organs/Areas of the Body: Pituitary gland, left eye (eye of the
personality), nose, ears.

Physiological Functions: Vitalizes the lower brain (cerebellum) and central nervous
system. Governs vision.

Psychological/Spiritual Qualities and Life Lessons: Commands, guides and

harmonizes the energies of the personality (lower chakras). Dissolving of negative ego.
Psychic individuation and balance. Mental images and abstract ideas. Ability to receive
and express intuitive wisdom; perception of the Infinite in a flash of intuitive perception.
Insight, imagination, and idealism. Clairvoyance, concentration, and peace of mind.
Wisdom, devotion, and perception beyond duality. Realization of the soul; soul force. A
light differentiation of consciousness still exists at this chakra; it is not yet the total
oneness of the Crown Chakra. One reveals the divine within and reflects the inherent
divinity within others. One attains the realization, "I am that I am" and becomes the
embodiment of sat-chit-ananda, or being, consciousness, and bliss. In this chakra, a
person realizes that he/she is an immortal spirit, and embodies all elements in their purest
form or essence. All external and internal changes cease to be a problem.

Awakened Potentials: The ability to perceive the divine, inner workings within
physical events. Cosmic consciousness; perception of unified wholeness. Self-emanating
and radiant. Commands overall aspects of the Self. Total transcendence of all desires,
which motivate life and impels one to move about in many directions. One becomes a

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knower of the past, present, and future. The danger of backsliding ends, there is no
spiritual reversal once one is stabilized in this chakra. One gains the ability to
comprehend the inner meaning of cosmic knowledge.

Possible Mental/Emotional Imbalances: Lack of concentration. Poor discernment

and connection with one's intuition. Too much reliance on books and information sources
outside of oneself (which isn’t to invalidate any source of information but to
communicate the need to empower oneself by developing intuitive perception and
wisdom). Fear, cynicism, tension, and bad dreams. Overly detached from the material
world.

Possible Physical Imbalances: Headaches. Eye problems.

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 SEVENTH or CROWN CHAKRA

Sahasrara Chakra-Bindu

Also known as the Cerebral Plexus.

Sahasrara means Thousand-Petalled, or Lotus of the Thousand Petals—corona

radiata.

Location: Top of the cranium; the crown of the head. Some sources say four finger
breadths above the crown of the head.

Main Themes: Unity, non-duality, oneness, union with Source.

Physiological Functions: Governs upper brain and core, right eye (eye of spirit),
and pineal.

Psychological/Spiritual Qualities and Life Lessons: The Abode of Bliss (Sat Chit
Ananda). One remains calm, peaceful, and undisturbed in relation to all of life's
experiences; one is no longer troubled by pleasure or pain, wealth or poverty, praise or
humiliation. The Absolute, the unmanifest, undifferentiated consciousness. The idea of
the personal or individual self is dissolved into the realization of Oneness. Oneness with
Source, with the Infinite. Liberation, freedom, and eternal bliss - the transcendental void.
Integration and balancing of all polarities. All feelings, emotions, and desires are resolved
into their Original Cause. Emergence from time, space, and perception beyond the
limitations of time and space; continuity of consciousness. The crown chakra is the
synthesis of all the others. It is said to have no associated color, sound or element, it is
beyond all qualities and conditions. It synchronizes all colors, encompasses all the senses
and all functions, and is all-pervading in its power. The spiritual will-to-be, synthesis,
inspiration, divine wisdom, guidance, and understanding. Idealism and selfless service.
The ability to empower oneself by having open access to divine authority, spiritual
information, revelation, inner guidance and spiritual will.

Awakened Potentials: One becomes illuminated like the sun and is continually

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radiant. Immortality and Union with Source is achieved.

Possible Mental/Emotional Imbalances: Lack of inspiration, confusion,

depression, feelings of alienation. Placing too much emphasis on needing external
authority figures such as teachers or gurus for accessing spiritual wisdom or guidance
(which is not to invalidate any teacher or guru, but only to communicate the need to
empower oneself with their own open access to and inner connection with divine
authority, will and guidance). Hesitation, or unwillingness to serve others.

Possible Physical Imbalances: Senility.

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