Where you’re looking from can be the issue
Beliefs, mental conditioning, attitudes, habits and the like aren’t the only elements in the human experience that need to be addressed on the journey of realization. There are issues, barriers and challenges and then there are ISSUES, BARRIERS and CHALLENGES that need attention, inquiry and work.
As an example ego reactivity is an issue that needs exploration, but taking ourselves to be a separate individual is an ISSUE that needs exploration. ISSUES are more fundamental, more subtle and more entrenched than issues – and we all know how relentless issues can be.
Another ISSUE that will arise at some point is the habit of orienting from being in a body. Think about it – you’re always facing forward.
Have you ever wondered about that?
Have you ever considered the fact that the soul has no such orientation? There is no front or back, up or down, in or out in pure consciousness.
Our biological orientation helps to constrain the freedom of our consciousness and possibilities.
Another element in this is vision. Our eyes face forward. More than 50 percent of the cortex, the surface of the brain, is devoted to processing visual information. It makes sense that our ingrained orientation to our experience is forward-facing.
It’s no big surprise
No wonder we’re always ‘looking’ at our experience. When asked: “What’s happening now?,” How often do we find ourselves looking at our experience to answer that question?
So, we’re separate from our experience and looking at it from a forward facing orientation, which is usually located in the head looking down or in.
Duh? So what?
Say, you’re meditating. Which way are you facing internally? How much are your eyes involved in your focus or concentration?
You see, the habit of the biology has been imbued into the experience of our soul. This is a very powerful form in the soul that needs to be worked with to free the soul’s potential.
Working with this happens little by little, indirectly through long-term meditation and spiritual practice, but making it obvious allows us to work with it more directly and since it is more fundamental than most psychological and emotional content, more freedom, flexibility and resilience in this area will ripple out into other structures and patterns.
Stepping away from your eyes
We can start working with our fixated vision and forward-facing orientation by stepping away from our eyes in meditation. Our eyes are closed, so we don’t need to look in the direction of our nose. Since our meditation practice includes not following thought or images that arise, we don’t need to ‘face’ anything internally.
In fact, we don’t even need to be in the head because awareness is everywhere and the eyes can’t look everywhere at once – try it. Looking everywhere at once is good exercise itself.
If you simply play around with the notion of this, eventually a moment or two and then more will arise when you’re not facing anywhere. It’s novel. I found that the trick was in the play, in the lightheartedness and not taking it on as a project, but as a curiosity.
Working from bed or the zafu
When I was working with out-of-the-body experience, I began exploring ‘turning around in my body’ as a way of loosening the ties with it. Unbeknownst to me, this actually began challenging “facing my experience,” eventually leading to the 360-degree experience of the soul.
The 360 degree orientation of the soul isn’t circular (two-dimensional) or spherical (three-dimensional) because it includes inter and intra dimensional. So, it’s every-which-way at once or directionless.
Lie in bed on your back. As you lay there just close your eyes, relax, turn over in your body, and look through the bed at the floor. At first, you’re just imagining it, but if you stay with it, a more kinesthetic sense of it will arise in awareness (awaring) – confusion is most likely to arise as to which way the body is actually facing.
As I said, have fun with it. Be like a little kid, don’t go out and play to have (create) fun. Let the fun extend and express itself in the play – put your head where your feet are!
If you’re sitting or meditating, simply turn around in your body while you sit. Your body is facing one way, you’re facing 180 degrees the other way.
If and when, you feel tension in the head or body – YOU’RE NOT PLAYING! Relax, this isn’t JOB One.
Leave questions and comments below about your play time.
Leaving you with a quote from A. H. Almaas, Diamond Heart Book 4
When you see how fundamental, how pervasive, how deep and entrenched your physical orientation is, you will notice that you don’t look at even your deep experiences from a total perspective. You look at them from the perspective of the body, from the physical perspective. Most of your issues arise from that perspective. When you feel that you are disappearing, what is it that is disappearing? Usually, it’s the image of your body You are terrified because you believe your physical body is the most important, fundamental, lasting real, fundamental, solid you. If that goes, you go. You don’t think, “I’m just seeing myself from a different place. My perception is detaching from the physical senses, and as a result, I am seeing something deeper than the physical.” If you do see it that way, you won’t feel that you are disappearing. You will be aware that you are not just seeing through your physical senses. Then there will be no fear, and no reason for the terror. So the source of the terror is our belief that the physical body is who we are—fundamentally and ultimately.