Today is week 5. Our 30-minute mediation starts with just a few of us today.  The more I practice this the easier it seems to fall into place although I did weave in and out of ordinary time during today's practice.  A tiger presents and I pet it and notice its magnificence.  I examine its teeth and large head.  I then seem to be the tiger as I grip my paws into the earth and move quickly through the snow somewhere.  I feel a sense of power and freedom as I traverse the vast and empty land making great speed. Then I find that I am in a zoo.  I am stuck with the sense of frustration and hopelessness of being locked up.  I start to feel what I would feel if I was contained as me and as an animal.  One that wants to be free but caged in.  A camel then flashes before my eyes before Christian calls us back. Why a camel, I wonder?
 
At the end of today’s practice we listen to instruction by the narrator as she tells us to focus on the 3rd eye not by efforting or concentrating but by placing our awareness here. A ‘being rather than a doing’ she tells us as I think of Osho who also advises against a one pointed concentration practice. I start to see Osho, his gray beard and the picture I have of him in my mind or maybe it was him.  He then disappears and I see an octopus (I am in a Beatles’ (garden) song once again without the psychedelics!) I cannot help think a message here about the meaning of Octopus.  When I get home I look up the meaning of octopus and what their medicine is. This is what it means according to one site.  
 
·         Willpower.
·         The use of the psyche.
·         Focus on the goals.
·         The creation of an illusion.
·         Creation of mysterious environment.
·         Strategy used for defense.
·         Knowledge of surroundings.
·         The use intelligence.
·         The unpredictability of attack.
·         The complexity of actions.
·         The power of regeneration and evolution.
http://www.auntyflo.com/magic/octopus
 
At the end of today I tell the group that I am blogging about my experience but will be sensitive to what I share about them.  I hold my breath as they stare without saying anything. I reassure them that I have given them fictitious names.  They have no interest in what I have written but rather are most curious of the names I have given them. Annette wants to be called Julie when I tell her her name.  Apparently she was punched by a famous Annette who accidentally swung her coat around into her while leaving an event when she was younger. We finally settled on the name Shanti (peace) instead.  It's the name of her cat and seems more fitting after hearing the coat story.

Today was the fourth meditation class and the people attending were slightly different  than last week but no one was new and we all knew each other. At one point there was time for a discussion/share and we started to unlayer.  Take off the layers of who we are and put them out there for each to see as we placed them in the center of the circle. Getting to know each other.  Little by little in safe and not so safe (vulnerable) ways. 

We started today's group once again without too much pretense after hearing about Bethany’s 10 day silent meditation retreat that she just got back from. I longed to hear more about her experience and was hanging on her every word as I leaned in towards her.  Like I do when someone tells me that they have hiked the AT trail or run an ultra-marathon.  I yearn to be there and savor their words and lived experience. I love to do amazing feats vicariously but often have little desire to actually do them myself.  I much prefer to read or hear about them. Meditation might be something that could lure me in for a 5 or 10 day sit as it takes little physical effort in comparison to the other things I long to do but don't.

Today’s 30 minute sit left me feeling so relaxed and zen for the first 20-25 minutes of it.  I had no anxiety.  Not even a smidgeon and was totally into it.  At least until Annette’s cell phone went off.  It took me out of my reverie for a few minutes and then put me more into a state of alertness as my heart started to pound a little. Like I had let my guard down and shouldn’t have.  

At one point, I decided to ask my third eye some questions that I have been grappling with and I received a stream of answers in return. I have to trust that the answers were accurately sent from my highest third eye Self even though they aren’t necessary the ones that I want to hear.

From today’s sit, I saw a former dictator of a Asian country who was responsible for millions of deaths.  I am not sure if I called him forth to question him or he just showed up but when I sensed him, I asked my guides first for protection, especially Archangel Michael before moving forward. Then after feeling cloaked with protection, I  asked the question of why?  The dictator smiled and looked at me like I was a fool before saying with a smile, For Power.   A flash of me smoking a cigarette came through and me burning my lower lip purposefully.  (Why this?? I don't smoke and hate pain.)  Then another one flashed of my energy being brushed off.  Like someone was brushing my energetic field of debris that I have picked up along the way.  (Afterwards when the group was talking outside after we had finished, Annette said that she does energy clearing for people and I wondered about this and if she every does virtual energetic brushing? Something I haven't experienced before.)

The next thing that I remember was Christian bringing us back. Back into our bodies.  Later we had another discussion and someone in the group keep saying, They. And I corrected her by saying, We.  There is no they at least not to me.  We are They and They are We.  Right?  Isn’t this how it is as spiritual beings? Don’t we talk with inclusive language-ing? We have to own all of what and who we are as human.  Both the shadow and the light.

As Scott Peck says in his book, People of the Lies.  Evil is a projection of our own wrongness on another.
I am not sure what this all means as I write it down or even if I am right, but it has definitely left me with food for thought to keep on considering and mulling over…speaking of food for thought.. I notice today that I tend to eat a lot of sugar on meditation days.  I crave it.  Maybe because sugar keeps me dense and in my body.  I need to look at this in future weeks and if I should give it up. 

But for now I just need to allow myself to be without too much consternation and take a gentle approach to myself.  I am making changes in my life and some of them are very dis-comfortable but surely they are needed or I wouldn’t be making them, right?  I guess I can ask this of my third eye next week!

I just got back from the third Clairvision meditation. It was a smaller circle.  Just Christian and Judy and Alice and a woman Sophia from New Mexico.  We hesitated to start not sure if another group member Annette was going to join us but eventually Christian shut the door as we inched in to make the circle tighter.  One of the building staff members it seemed was hovering outside the door banging around and going up and down the stairs.  At first I was worried that it was Annette and she was feeling shut out by the door being closed, but then I just settled in and started to listen to Christian’s voice that seemed softer than usual prompting us for a 30 minute sit.  The correct breath was hard to find as usual for me.  Not sure why as I have done plenty of pranayama.  Christian’s throaty voice was both reassuring, and a discomforting reminder that I wasn’t doing the breath correctly.  Just being preoccupied by it became a concentration.  I thought of what Osho says about concentration.  For scientists not meditators. You have to start somewhere, right?!
 
Just when I thought it would be a nothing (no-thing) sit my mind opened up and I was taken aback into the abyss-like a train  rapidly roaring me backwards into my third eye as I started to be besieged by images.  One distinct one was of a donkey.  I went to it and petted it and got on it and then I became a part of it.  A human fetus in a sac inside of this donkey. (I have been getting these fetus/birth images of late).
 
The next image I remember was of holding a walrus tusk and me thinking why this?  Something out of a Beatles Song, "I am the Walrus."  Like entering an LSD trip without the drugs.  Through this third eye mediation it has brought up these types of images for me.  Imagined images that may be nonsensical but also can have significance.  Maybe time will tell and have the answers I am looking for.

During our share between meditative times, I mentioned the images of seeing a Donkey and Christian pointed to Alice.  Alice's eyes became wide and bright.  Coincidentally, she bonded with a donkey the week before at a equine therapy training. She was so enthralled with their bonding of each other that she took pictures which she later shared.  Alice and I have just met at this group and had a bonding moment  after class as we exchanged phone numbers andI gazed at her pictures in the bright sunlight outside.  The 'group mind' was in effect it seems as this Donkey, its medicine visited me through the group's energy. 

When I got home I looked up the meaning of walrus and it says..  

The walrus teaching us about knowledge due to its water domain.  Walrus is said to be the keeper of knowledge, meaning if this creature comes to you he is trying to tell us that we can achieve a higher sense of knowledge if we only took a time to meditate and look within our self. http://www.auntyflo.com/magic/walrus

This makes me think that I am on the right Tract in this meditation...
 
 
 
 

​My teacher Christian has invited me to join a ‘third eye meditation’ group  that he has started locally. The group is based on a well-honed technique that has been developed by his internationally renowned Master Teacher.  It is a technique that allows entry into the spiritual realms of consciousness through the third eye portal.  This gateway, that once accessed allows for a connection with all aspects of ourselves and potentiates a formation of the group mind network. This can ultimately lead to an interweaving with the ‘collective’, where Christ consciousness dwell within humanity. 

Interestingly, I am not daunted by the magnitude of what we are trying to accomplish, but rather stuck on the breath that is needed to start this process. I am initially, reluctant to join.  But after some coaxing I go back today for a second time and when I do I am thankful that I have. I look around at the others and immediately feel a kinship with them as I look into their eyes.

We start without too much pretense as Christian turns on the tape.  We are instructed by the moderator to start the requisite throat breath and it is explained to us in minute detail how we are to do this.  Such minute detail that I inwardly squirm and wonder how long we are going to have to stay with this instruction. I want to move forward. Later I tune in and listen to a tale of a dragon, a boy and the need to start with the basics (at the base) before the higher realms can be thoroughly explored. It is told to us as a tale and I immediately think of second grade and a book that I was given. It isn’t until later that I make an important connection of trying to stay with the fundamentals (first) before jumping ahead even if my mind is able to without the technique. It will be important for me to keep with the group pace through this process of learning as each rung in the ladder needs to be secure and sturdy to support the upward climb together.
 
Second grade was the year the schoolteachers were starting to figure out that maybe there was something amiss with my learning.  I don't recall getting outside help but I must have because I have a memory of a nice older lady, Miss. Fisher (probably in her 40's or 50's) buying me lunch one day and giving me a book about dragons.  
 
Miss Fisher with her curly hair, glasses and sensible shoes reassured me that I was smart and would get there but like a building that needed to start from the ground up, we needed to work on the foundation first before skipping ahead.  I remember feeling frustration (and shame) but also happy--happy for the extra attention and the neat book on dragons that she gifted to me.  It was one that I cherished long after that day.  I also understood the visual she was trying to impart in the cafeteria line, the importance of building blocks needing to start from the ground floor to secure a strong edifice so the building doesn’t eventually collapse. This memory screen of that day back then still sticks with me. There isn't much else I remember from being seven, just that and  saving my youngest brother from drowning and my grandfather dying that year. 

I stay with the breath today as best as I can before flying forward through the portal to the many images and messages that pass me by. One of the first ones is of being back in Philly at a yoga class that I taught at a work site a number of years ago.  The snippet of memory that I recall was chatting informally with a few of the women after class about a strange dream that I had had the night before in which I had just birthed a baby. One of the ladies reassured me that it didn’t mean a literal baby but more likely just that I was starting something new, a new auspicious beginning…
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