Moving towards refreshing self-awareness is what we are striving for.
Question attack using a three-step method
This is how it is done. Our mind is attacked by questions about the immediate sensations like Where? What? and What does it look like? We have to stress the fact that we are talking about revealing what it is actually like, so this process does not mean fantasizing or making things up. As soon as the characteristics of the spontaneously formed state begin to surface, one can move from the diagnostic stage to the stage of therapy: from the evaluation of the state and solution to the observation of the changes, and from analysis to meditation.
Here are the major questions for the different stages of work:
Where and what do you have in your initial state?
Can you define where it is useful or not, and what kind of solutions do you see in connection with what you have discovered? You can discover the factors that trigger certain sensations and the way your body reacts to these sensations.
Where are the obstacles that inhibit the natural flow? What do they look like? What happens to your sensations because of it?
Then, in three steps, we resolve the following questions: where do we take what will help us update our contour/profile and help us mature? How will it come?
This algorithm follows the principle where a bigger task of updating ones state is divided into smaller steps that are much easier to make.
As soon as traumatic contour dissolves, excessive tensions disappear, and the good knowledge becomes a part of the body and keeps your life project blossoming.
Conscious choice
With the help of methodology of psychocatalysis, we will find a solution to a series of questions:
Is there a reason to learn a new foreign language? If there is, what channel should be used for this purpose? Will you make it look like youre learning it or will you invest yourself in the process so that you could understand the language, speak it, and taste the fruits of your effort?
What should one do to make way for this knowledge to your body and have easy access to it?
How can I feel free and relaxed when I use this language?
Are there some useful tips and tricks to learn efficiently? Is there a better way to learn?
There will be three levels of our work:
reason and intellect (head);
feelings and soul (chest);
willpower and self-actualization (stomach and solar plexus).
We will strive to keep our mind clear, our soul firm, and our willpower strong. Lets start with focusing our attention.
There are two phases: the first one is preparatory, and it is similar to preparing the ground for sowing; then comes the main phase of sowing the seeds that will bring the harvest. Yet, we will begin with some general work that is not directly connected directly with the learning process.
LETS FREE OUR ATTENTION
There is a Chinese saying that the one who has a lot of chi (energy) is rich. This is how we are going to rephrase this saying: The one whose attention is free can learn a lot and do a lot. Our attention can be called the currency of our mind, its gold reserve. Paying attention wisely defines the success and fate of a person, and when attention is wasted, it brings problems along. Our freedom is in the way we manage our attention, and rational use of it is the key to success.
What usually happens to our attention? Its existence is far from being trouble-free. Unfinished tasks, unresolved issues, failed exams, unrealistic dreams, meaningless attachments, and unhealthy worries hold our attention hostage. It is high time we said goodbye to many of these elements that gobble the energy of our mind and soul and keep going solely due to inertia. However, we never find time for that. When such elements pile up, normal functioning of the mind becomes impossible.
There are two ways to resolve this issue: either you work through each episode, which casts shadow in our mind, or you try to get rid of them in one go. I prefer the second option and then additionally work through anything that is left. This strategy I choose for my everyday psychotherapeutic practice, and it works.
Whatever holds our attention can be perceived as something remote, or it can be close to you, but in the majority of cases, this information manages to creep into our mind and sometimes even fall into our stomach. From my experience, I would recommend beginning with setting free deeper layers, which are at the level of our stomach and solar plexus; however, one can also start with more superficial layers of our mind, that is the head, and then make his/her way to the depth.
The body can recognise such retractions causing tension as greyness, darkness, blackness. Even if the topic is worthy of attention, it should not be in the stomach. There is an optimal distance for it.
If you feel surrounded by problems
Exercise 1: Total immediate reinvention of the mind
In order to maintain better concentration, close your eyes. You can open and close them anytime you wish. Your concentration is much more important than the fact whether your eyes are open or closed.
Stage 1
Your problems can find themselves in your head as if they are in a saucepan with a lid on it. Then it makes sense removing the lid and let the tissues of the brain smooth. Everything unnecessary will fly away as darkness and trash out of your head.
It can be dust, smoke, or soot. It may leave your body as plumes of smoke from the chimney; it can be a whirlpool or a tornado. Sometimes, it leaves as smoke rings: the shape is not important, what really matters is the direction of the movement.
Let this flow work. Let it carry out everything superfluous and unnecessary.
As a powerful vacuum cleaner, it will drain everything grey and dark out of your head, and then from every corner of your body.
It includes the zone of solar plexus, which often stores the consequences of frights.
6. It often happens that everything that used to cause worry, tension, and even fear leaves the body as black or slate-grey smoke.
7. Your body is being cleansed. Intuitively, you can feel how much of this process has been complete.
8. Stay there. Observe the process as long as you need to bring it to 100% completion. Your attention is the catalyst of this process.
9. When you feel your body cleansed, you will feel it closing; and that is the time
to open your eyes.
To make sure that everything is clean, have another go.
If unpleasant signals managed to reach your solar plexus, guide your attention to the extreme point when they settled, and then say: Stop! Go back! and then observe the way that substance, which may look like black smoke or something similar to it, leaves your body in the reverse trajectory (it will leave the same way it came in).
It usually leaves the body through the top of the head. The lid, or the hatch opens up for a short period of time, and everything that wounded us at a moment of temporary instability will go away. Signals, which caused the tension, leave the body as dark energy and some fine suspended matter. Sometimes, it can even look like trash or stones. Sometimes, it can be some abstract objects like red and yellow triangles, for example. Not all these associations are that important as they are not our goal. What matters here is the process of letting go of everything that we do not really need in life.
It usually leaves the body through the top of the head. The lid, or the hatch opens up for a short period of time, and everything that wounded us at a moment of temporary instability will go away. Signals, which caused the tension, leave the body as dark energy and some fine suspended matter. Sometimes, it can even look like trash or stones. Sometimes, it can be some abstract objects like red and yellow triangles, for example. Not all these associations are that important as they are not our goal. What matters here is the process of letting go of everything that we do not really need in life.
Sometimes, darkness goes away through our eyes, ears, or our mouth.
It happens so that once one has restored his or her peace, a black dot or something similar to it moves away from the stomach through the feet. This can mean that some ancestral fright brought by the family has left the body.
That black dot which went out through the feet
Tatiana is a successful businesswoman. The tension she feels in her stomach, sometimes, brings her physical pain. As she calms down, the tension drops, and she feels how some black dot leaves her body through her feet. Her stomach feels liberated, then her legs gain strength, they seem to come to life again, and she is rubbing her hands. Then she remembers that she is a granddaughter of former political prisoners both on mothers and on fathers side of the family. She has become an entrepreneur. The understanding of the fact that the risk of danger is not as high as it used to be for her ancestors gives her pleasant feeling. The day after the session during our seminar, she discovers some residue feeling in her chest in the form of red worms, and this sensation quickly disappeared. Tatiana felt peaceful, and her attention was free20.
If you feel that this process is completed, you can move on to the second stage of the reinvention.
Stage 2
1. When you feel that your internal space has been cleansed, that the membrane of the entrance has skinned over, that the hatch has closed, then observe how reasonable solutions, experience, and competence that surround your head pour into your body and fill in the space, especially where you have previously experienced tension.
2. This is when the flow of light, water, some mass, lava or even something free-flowing is moving down from the surrounding space or your head into your. In some cases, new knowledge is born and is unfolded directly in a place, which has been cleared of unhelpful information.
3. Everything, that makes us more mature and more confident, flows into the tension-free body and find its right place, thus forming the core of the competence.
4. It usually flows down to the level of the solar plexus (in the stomach, at the level of the elbows)
5. This will help you feel calm and maintain your strength, even in stressful situations. This will help you act precisely and creatively.
6. You may feel how light your head has become and your body has this pleasant feeling of saturation, which makes it more stable and calm. The sensation of pleasant heaviness can reach your fingers and toes. Remain in this state as long as you find necessary. Gradually, this heaviness and warmth will be absorbed, and then you will experience lightness and freshness.
7. A part of your strength can come from your feet, from your roots.
8. This feeling of new fullness will support you and protect you in the future.
9. Along with cleansing from the old and filling in with the new, this process can be seen as some sort of initiation into maturity. Now, you will be able to solve any problem like an adult.
10. When you feel that the process is complete, open your eyes.
What you have just done is the most efficient and significant practice for restoring your potential. You might find it useful to repeat this procedure.
Whatkind of snake am I cherishing in my bosom?
Our attention can be disturbed not only by problems, but also by some useless wishes, empty hopes, and some unfortunate attachments. This is what we can find in the chest, in our soul.
Exercise 2: Getting rid of pipe dreams
Stage 1
1. Define what has sunk deep into your heart and what exactly is it that you are cherishing?
2. Decide if it is something useful and has any perspective and if you should really keep nurturing it.
3. Whichever useless object or attachment you discover in your chest will fly away your energy will be released.
Stop cherishing snakes
In this part of the work, you let go of every snake you have been cherishing so far in the depths of your body, and by snake, we mean everything that has been harmful. Letting go in this case is connected with calming down and finding peace, without any fight. There is nothing to fight with. If you have made your mind, you will find your peace. Under such circumstances, snakes dry out and vanish as dust or simply disappear.
These emotions can be connected with some unfortunate infatuation with a person in a relationship or when you are not single. It can also be alcohol addiction: then those bottles of liquor are let go from your internal space which peace of mind fills instead.
In my book Objects in the Body, I mentioned observations of the Orthodox monks on how wicked thoughts settle in our mind and how desires unfold: it never happens quickly. Fortunately, the reverse development of the events for these unwelcome conditions is also possible. As a result, sobering up helps a person return from the unnatural state to its natural condition and reconnection with God.
Stage 2
If you realize that your wishes are natural, and the unnatural part was tying them to the object that you have just let go, then take this thought a little further. Are there better or legal ways of satisfying these wishes? Is not there someone or something on the horizon that would bring you that long-awaited satisfaction without causing you any trouble?
If you experience something like that, then let this feeling come closer to you.
3. If not, then prepare yourself for attentive scanning of the space around you so that as soon as this realization appears, you will react to it. Meanwhile, you have to be patient.
4. Ability to stay strong through difficult times is a trait of a mature person.
Where am I?
In one of our classes, there was a woman, who, judging by her facial features, was a very gifted person. Such people tend to have very bright awakening moments. All of a sudden, she says: I have complete silence; there are no images at all.
Here is a part of our conversation with her:
Surrounded by fir-trees
Where are you? Are you here or somewhere else?
She finds herself in the country. Even her picture had something of this sort (the test drawing which you must have already tried doing): in her picture, there was a person surrounded by triangles, which stood for fir-trees. What did we discover in our conversation? 70% of her attention was there, in the woods, and only 30% was present at the seminar.