Another Description
close your eyes. take a couple deep breaths. pay attention to your thinking. where is it located?
move it.
move it right. without making any attempt to suppress or change or even pay attention to the contents of your thoughts, merely draw them over to the right half of your body.
all kinds of thoughts. any of them. draw them over, no matter how profound or abstract or mundane or stupid. pull them over to the right half of your body and make a gate in the centre (around the level of your solar plexus). close the gate and leave your left half open and empty.
This might take some time and effort, but once you are sure that all your thinking is on the right, pay attention the the energy that is watching that thinking. Perception itself. recognise that it is seperate from the thinking, and shake it loose from the thoughts (which are still kept on the right side of your body.
Open the gate you made at your solar plexus and pour your perception through the aperture, closing it firmly behind you.
Your right half will feel like a little, isolated bubble of babble, but never mind. let it babble on without you.
focus on expansion and openness.
You might find yourself slipping into dreaming, or you might find your perception detaching from your body and floating into the infinite.
this is the point of the description. Once the left half is discovered in silence, it will guide your actions to what is appropriate.
you may also find that your endless attachment to yor internal diologue will draw you back through the aperture into the right half of your body. It may even disseminate itself so that you think that the right side is all over your body. gently draw it back to its place, and leave the right half open and empty. you didn't think it would be easy, did you. these things take practice.
when this happens, try again with perception. follow a little piece through the gate and into the infinite silence.
always be sure to close the gate. The influence of the left half can be overwhelming, and the ego is really quite fragile.
explanation (for the right half):
The petty mind has its place as a guardian, but in most of us it has been bolstered by learning and thinks of itself as a warden. It is meant to keep out the harmful, while remaining open minded to new experiences. In most of us it hardens into a prison and keeps out and suppresses everything that does not support its preconceptions.
It is made of our personal history, karma, or character armour (chose your own words) which is stored in our liver (and has an endlessly cyclical motion through time)(it is also stored throughout our body, but as it impedes the flow of 'chi' it therefore affects and creates tension in the liver which is responsible for ensuring the smooth flow of chi throughout the body). When it acts out of turn, it creates an internal tension that sometimes flows across to the left half, impeding the spleen energy (which is linear by nature). The cravings that result lead to the endless munching of sweets, grease, bread, liquor or their ideological counterpart (worry, depression, and the egotism that results from insecurity). By drawing all the energy associated with personal history over to its right half of the body, the spleen energy, which in its pure state is aligned with the silent action of the will, then can percieve without the blinders of personal history. The energy of the left half is wordless, symbol-less, pictureless (in fact anything that can be put into language at all refers to the processes that you have just isolated on the right half). The only way to talk about the left half is to talk around it, or to talk abstractly, as reason is a function of the right half. don't let it tell you that these delineations have anything to do with left and right brain functions. this is different.
by making such a clear delineation between halves, it is ensured that the left half (which is usually suppressed in most earthly cultures) has enough room for will to manifest itself.
Dreaming is a function of perception which is a function of will.
will is a function of the individual's connection with the grand totality of all things, and the underlying emptiness that infuses all things.
There are two wills: the will of the right half is volition and decision and action and deliberation, while the will of the left half is only seen in retrospect (like "hmmm. I'll go down this road today, don't know why...oh, there's so-and-so who I haven't seen in a month, and I just happen to be carrying the book they lent me that I just happened to have finished a minute ago that they just happen to need for an essay due tomorrow... whew, that must be the Yin will in action". get it?).
have fun. or don't. it doesn't matter a fig to me. this is a journal and that means that what is contained within it is meant as a record of my doings and little more (incidentally, doing is also you guessed it, right half. the left half does without doing).
move it.
move it right. without making any attempt to suppress or change or even pay attention to the contents of your thoughts, merely draw them over to the right half of your body.
all kinds of thoughts. any of them. draw them over, no matter how profound or abstract or mundane or stupid. pull them over to the right half of your body and make a gate in the centre (around the level of your solar plexus). close the gate and leave your left half open and empty.
This might take some time and effort, but once you are sure that all your thinking is on the right, pay attention the the energy that is watching that thinking. Perception itself. recognise that it is seperate from the thinking, and shake it loose from the thoughts (which are still kept on the right side of your body.
Open the gate you made at your solar plexus and pour your perception through the aperture, closing it firmly behind you.
Your right half will feel like a little, isolated bubble of babble, but never mind. let it babble on without you.
focus on expansion and openness.
You might find yourself slipping into dreaming, or you might find your perception detaching from your body and floating into the infinite.
this is the point of the description. Once the left half is discovered in silence, it will guide your actions to what is appropriate.
you may also find that your endless attachment to yor internal diologue will draw you back through the aperture into the right half of your body. It may even disseminate itself so that you think that the right side is all over your body. gently draw it back to its place, and leave the right half open and empty. you didn't think it would be easy, did you. these things take practice.
when this happens, try again with perception. follow a little piece through the gate and into the infinite silence.
always be sure to close the gate. The influence of the left half can be overwhelming, and the ego is really quite fragile.
explanation (for the right half):
The petty mind has its place as a guardian, but in most of us it has been bolstered by learning and thinks of itself as a warden. It is meant to keep out the harmful, while remaining open minded to new experiences. In most of us it hardens into a prison and keeps out and suppresses everything that does not support its preconceptions.
It is made of our personal history, karma, or character armour (chose your own words) which is stored in our liver (and has an endlessly cyclical motion through time)(it is also stored throughout our body, but as it impedes the flow of 'chi' it therefore affects and creates tension in the liver which is responsible for ensuring the smooth flow of chi throughout the body). When it acts out of turn, it creates an internal tension that sometimes flows across to the left half, impeding the spleen energy (which is linear by nature). The cravings that result lead to the endless munching of sweets, grease, bread, liquor or their ideological counterpart (worry, depression, and the egotism that results from insecurity). By drawing all the energy associated with personal history over to its right half of the body, the spleen energy, which in its pure state is aligned with the silent action of the will, then can percieve without the blinders of personal history. The energy of the left half is wordless, symbol-less, pictureless (in fact anything that can be put into language at all refers to the processes that you have just isolated on the right half). The only way to talk about the left half is to talk around it, or to talk abstractly, as reason is a function of the right half. don't let it tell you that these delineations have anything to do with left and right brain functions. this is different.
by making such a clear delineation between halves, it is ensured that the left half (which is usually suppressed in most earthly cultures) has enough room for will to manifest itself.
Dreaming is a function of perception which is a function of will.
will is a function of the individual's connection with the grand totality of all things, and the underlying emptiness that infuses all things.
There are two wills: the will of the right half is volition and decision and action and deliberation, while the will of the left half is only seen in retrospect (like "hmmm. I'll go down this road today, don't know why...oh, there's so-and-so who I haven't seen in a month, and I just happen to be carrying the book they lent me that I just happened to have finished a minute ago that they just happen to need for an essay due tomorrow... whew, that must be the Yin will in action". get it?).
have fun. or don't. it doesn't matter a fig to me. this is a journal and that means that what is contained within it is meant as a record of my doings and little more (incidentally, doing is also you guessed it, right half. the left half does without doing).