It’s been getting a little deep around here, so here’s a little Troma perspective on Yoga.
Author: snswrld 10◦ = 1□
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Dualities of Mind and Travel in Higher Dimensions
Greetings, my cosmic traveler friend! As we embark on a journey to explore the dualities of mind and travel in higher dimensions, let us dive into the mystical and mind-bending realms of Tao and I Ching.
While Western psychology has been struggling with the apparent dualities inherent in conscious existence since Queen Victoria’s time, other cultures and societies have been creating more accurate models of the nature of these dualities for centuries. Here I present two of these models for your consideration, so buckle up, baby!
1. The Tao and I Ching
Trigrams of the IChing If we look at the base truths of our reality we can see from our perspective there appear to be three physical dimensions, while we experience another dimension as the passage of time. To science, this is where reality exists. At some momentary now point, despite the Universe expanding and all items within it in constant relative motion an “objective” reality exists. This presupposes an objective reality apart from mind or consciousness. However given the rapid advances of theoretical physics and the apparent facts of either string theory or M-Theory being true, we know quite concretely that we are missing dimensions that the whole would depend upon given its measurable features. Most likely our reality has either 10 or 11 dimensions and we are only aware of four of them if you believe the materialists. Now think about the directions and the cardinal points. On the plane we have four directions, depth gives us two more (up and down), and time gives us two more (past and future), despite not being able to travel from future to past in our current predicament. If we make the dualistic Yin-Yang center of our consciousness the relative center of the Universe, we arrive at the eight possible directions of travel seen in the above diagram. Each of the Trigrams represents a mode of direction proceeding outward from the center of the mind.
The Yin Yang symbol is an apt one for our conscious exploration of the nature of mind as each side contains the seed of its opposite and it is depicted in motion. I would posit to you dear reader that this symbol represents the positive and negative currents of mind each stimulated by its opposite pole but different than the deeper duality of root consciousness and the mind itself. I would suggest that in order to realize this fact in action it is necessary to silence the thought track, whether that be verbal, like most people, or more like pure thought for others. Not everyone has an internal monologue, but it is easier to observe the roots of thought if you are able to silence the thought process that you have identified with in this lifetime. If you have an internal voice and silence it, you can observe the two other voices which create this experience of living through monologue. They are the twin devil and angel of your waking being, they are most noticeably not your voice. They are seeds of mental motion who, in their interference pattern of waveforms generate that stream of rambling that the unfortunate believe is their consciousness. In the sleep-walking world of this society, seemingly externalized and very dangerous to navigate, it is beneficial to surf this center wave of consciousness, whether it is breaking good or evil, because those are the rules of the game we are given.
But wait, there’s more! What about the question that arises when you encounter this aspect of mind: if my inner voice is not me, and this devil and angel are not me, who, what, and where am I? We can say, that for now, you are that thing which is observing these facts of mind. In Yoga it is referred to as Purusha or Soul and for our purposes now we can also refer to it as witness consciousness. It is possible through meditation to show the conscious mind the appearance of Purusha which is then reflected back at itself to be witnessed, but itself is the thing which is doing the observing. What you have come to accept as mind is actually the motion in life-force, Chi, or Prana closest to the metaphysical consciousness of your individual Purusha. The ether is the mind, and all matter, including your body and brain are merely regularized and temporarily structured disturbances in this Universal sea of Life. The organs of sense, with their electrochemical signaling, merely translate and transmit manifest point-events to and from the Purusha.
Now, what the I Ching theorizes is that moving up one level in awareness rather than giving us 10 directions of travel the map itself doubles to 64 different modes of movement.
64 Hexagrams of the I Ching This may be great for divination and to show the combination of states of mind, but if we are to travel any further up the central axis of consciousness, the exponential explosion of states of mind quickly becomes overwhelming as the next level gives us 64 X 64 states at minimum. Better then to switch to a different map or model.
2. The Tree of Life
Occult version of the Tree of Life If we think of this model as approximating similar ideas of dimensionality as the I Ching, we can use it as a map for exploration of higher dimensions. The first four dimensions of the manifested Universe being represented by the four-fold division of Malkuth into the cardinal points, then every plane on the way upward can be seen as a new dimension. This adds the element of multi-dimensional directionality to our map, as well as a description of the modes of travel between these higher coordinate points. For example, the straight path upward along the beam of consciousness takes us to Yesod, the bottom-most point of which is the dreamworld and is visited by passing through the unconscious or awakening the Kundalini. It only adds a new directionality of up and down perpendicular to all the right angles of the four dimensions. The current illustration, though not all theorists agree on this point, shows two divergent paths on either side that we can use to get to the sixth dimension, the Hod-Netzach plane, through the conscious modes of madness on one side and death and rebirth on the other. By the time we reach this 6th dimension, we already have 22 directions of travel along 11 paths, but like traveling from the South Pole, if we are grounded in Malkuth, every direction is also North.
This is where we get the feeling that Heaven is in the sky, or the idea that certain types of consciousness are “Higher”, the realm we are beginning from is the South Pole of Consciousness and if we want to stay in the World of awareness all other directions are “Up”. Various means of exploration are available to the traveler from the Shamanistic to the purely mathematical, but within the superstructure there has to be a witnessing consciousness. The wave function of probabilistic ether only collapses to a point-event upon observation. What we cannot take up the tree is the material body and physical mind of the brain. The current of life-force is such that all gross material manifestation is pushed to the four-dimensional world and a successive chain of vehicles for the Purusha is necessary to travel higher. Luckily for us thinking/dreaming creatures the next vehicle up is the astral body, or as you may be more familiar with it, the dream-body. This body takes less of our ego and persona with it, yet we are able to recognize it as ourself and rarely have an identity crisis upon waking from dream. You do not have to be asleep to access this body on its travels, you only have to be very relaxed. The probability of any event being observed in dream is much easier to influence than here in the manifested material spectrum, and once dreamed, easier to bring into this world. All the techniques used to visualize a point-event in a higher dimension and then observe the desired event in this realm constitutes Magick, and it is the reason persisting in a very rigorous meditation practice is necessary to produce reliable willed occult events on our plane. Increasing the difficulty of this endeavor Purusha is at the center of every living being, collapsing the wave function every moment and continuing the existence of this reality in every possible direction.
Given the unpleasantness encountered regularly on our current shared plane, it only makes sense to stop incarnating as profane matter beings and pursue a more permanent place in a higher realm while keeping the option to manifest here at will. The surest path to such an existence in our waking hours is deep meditation and reconciling these dualities in a synergism of higher self. Whether that is a truer existence is up to the traveler, but given the doctrines of Maya as illusionary existence and the so-called Allegory of Plato’s Cave, it is worth an effort for us to master travel up the Tree or into the Tao as your preferred map guides you.
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Music and Beej Mantras for Breathwork Sessions
I plan on leading some Holotropic Breathwork sessions here locally and wanted to make sure I had music and imagery that I could legally use so here’s the latest video in our yogapunx series. Enjoy.
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Kundalini Activation Syndrome and How to Cope
As we’ve given a technique to trigger Kundalini in our discussion of the Tarot card The Hanged Man, this would be an excellent time to discuss what’s known as Kundalini Activation Syndrome as the easy trigger of withholding ejaculation means that many Westerners can invoke an experience for which they are totally unprepared. Many, who have had this energy aroused by trauma, danger, drugs, or spiritual techniques practiced without guidance and preparation ultimately find themselves institutionalized in mental facilities or jails. Others seek to dampen the energy through alcohol and sedative drugs, destroying the psyche and persona until a better way is found to express the energy. If these apply to you, or you’d like to pre-prepare, let’s explore what’s happening internally and what you can do to channel and harness the energy.
The Kundalini awakening is a mysterious and powerful phenomenon that has captured the imagination of spiritual seekers for centuries. It is said to be the unlocking of the divine energy that resides at the base of the spine, and its ascent through the chakras can lead to a profound transformation of the mind, body, and soul.
Those who have experienced Kundalini awakening describe it as a state of heightened awareness, where the senses become more acute and the mind is flooded with a sense of awe and wonder at the universe around us. It is as if a veil has been lifted, revealing the true nature of reality and our place within it.
But the Kundalini awakening is not without its dangers. The sudden influx of energy can be overwhelming, causing physical and emotional discomfort, and leading to a sense of disorientation and confusion. The unprepared seeker may find themselves lost in a world of delusion, unable to distinguish reality from fantasy.
Yet for those who are ready, the Kundalini awakening can be a life-changing experience, leading to a greater understanding of the self and a deeper connection to the divine. It is a journey of self-discovery, where the seeker must confront their deepest fears and desires in order to transcend them.
In the end, the Kundalini awakening is not just a spiritual phenomenon, but a profound testament to the power of the human spirit. It is a reminder that we are all capable of greatness, and that the universe is full of mysteries waiting to be unravelled. So embrace the journey, and let the Kundalini awaken within you.
What is Kundalini? According to authors Mini Sharma,1Mondeep Dhankar,1 and Deepak Kumar2
“Kundalini,” meaning “coiled-up” in Sanskrit, is a type of Hindu Yoga practice. 3 It is also related to the practice of all kinds of Hindu tantra, Tibetan Buddhism, Chinese Qigong (Chi Kung), and some Eastern martial arts. 3
According to the yoga tradition, kundalini is like an energy, a serpent, or a goddess that lies dormant at the base of the spine of all human beings. 3 Sivananda says that the awakening of kundalini manifests itself through various physical and psychological signs and symptoms such as feeling the currents of prana (vital energy) rising to the Sahasrara chakra (thousand-petalled: the individual’s center of spirit, enlightenment, wisdom, universal consciousness, and connection to higher guidance), feeling vibrations of prana in different parts inside the body, feeling electric-like currents flow up and down the nerves, experiencing bliss, having divine visions, and getting inspiration and insight. When kundalini is at one chakra, intense heat is felt there, and when it leaves that center for the next chakra, the former chakra becomes very cold and appears lifeless. 3
Many Mind/Body sciences have been developed to awaken this energy, which is seen by these traditions as a Universal good. However, in the unprepared, the accidental triggering of this process is often identified as psychosis or bipolar disorder. Given some of the symptoms, we will see why. According to the Sai Ayurvedic Institute symptoms of the awakening are:
- Muscle twitches, cramps, or spasms
- Energy rushes or immense electricity circulating the body
- Itching, vibrating, prickling, tingling, stinging, or crawling sensations
- Intense heat or cold
- Involuntary bodily movements: jerking, tremors, shaking; feeling an inner force pushing one into postures or moving one’s body in unusual ways. (May be misdiagnosed as epilepsy, restless legs syndrome, or PLMD)
- Alterations in eating and sleeping patterns
- Episodes of extreme hyperactivity or, conversely, overwhelming fatigue
- Intensified or diminished sexual desires
- Headaches, pressures within the skull
- Racing heartbeat, pains in the chest
- Digestive system problems
- Numbness or pain in the limbs (particularly the left foot and leg)
- Pains and blockages anywhere; often in the back and neck
- Emotional outbursts; rapid mood shifts; seemingly unprovoked or excessive episodes of grief, fear, rage, depression
- Spontaneous vocalizations (including laughing and weeping) — are as unintentional and uncontrollable as hiccoughs
- Hearing an inner sound or sounds, classically described as a flute, drum, waterfall, birds singing, bees buzzing but which may also sound like roaring, whooshing, or thunderous noises or like ringing in the ears
- Mental confusion; difficulty concentrating
- Altered states of consciousness: heightened awareness; spontaneous trance states; mystical experiences (if the individual’s prior belief system is too threatened by these, they can lead to bouts of psychosis or self-grandiosity)
- Heat, strange activity, and/or blissful sensations in the head, particularly in the crown area
- Ecstasy, bliss, and intervals of tremendous joy, love, peace, and compassion
- Psychic experiences: extrasensory perception; out-of-body experiences; past life memories; astral travel; direct awareness of auras and chakras; contact with spirit guides through inner voices, dreams, or visions; healing powers
- Increased creativity: new interests in self-expression and spiritual communication through music, art, poetry, etc.
- Intensified understanding and sensitivity
- Insight into one’s own essence
- Enhanced awareness of one’s energetic environment (including “impressions” from others)
- Enlightenment experiences
- Sense of a more expansive reality, transcendent awareness
The Wreckage of Awakening All of these psychophysical changes brought on rapidly and a source of clear distress can send the practitioner right to Doctors, counselors, priests, cult leaders, or whatever source of guidance they can locate to try and make sense of the experience. The real problem is, the unwary practitioner has not done the preparation of energy work or of the psyche and the energy, encountering a diseased body and mind recoils and attempts release at every energetic point. This is not a hopeless situation.
The Sai Institute has some recommendations that might be helpful, such as ceasing energy work or eating vegetarian, but for me, these did not work, and eating a strict vegetarian diet especially sent me to the heights of mania and psychosis. First, the practitioner needs to ground. Don’t eat a more spiritual diet, eat the heaviest Tamasic diet possible. Meat, burgers, stew, chili. Weigh that energy body down with meat and fat. Put butter in everything. Eat potatoes. Heavy, think heavy, but lay off the alcohol and sedatives. Even though they provide relief from the strain, it is only a temporary reprieve, and you will still have to learn to contain the energy. Start building muscle, the increased testosterone this brings will help with courage. Keep meditating. You have no choice but to live as a cosmic cat and mystical adventurer now so establish that regular meditation practice and connect with the energy at a deep level, drawing it back down to its root. The entire reason these problems are happening is the overall energy of the body was not balanced and strong, so the Kundalini could not rise straight up the spinal channel. You will have to deal with all your blockages and issues until you can rise through the chakras.
Physical blockages and knots in the energy body are known as granthis, and your average westerner never puts in the work of dealing with them. These are psychosomatic traumas and entry points for negative psychic energy. A physical routine of Hatha yoga, combined with the practice of Kundalini yoga will help energize and then release these blockages. Regular massage and physical therapy practices can help. If you want to take a sledgehammer to the problem the breathwork routine of Dr. Stan Grof known as Holotropic Breathwork combined with deep tissue massage can heal years of damage very quickly. Ultimately though there is no easy cure and it’s going to take time to prepare or reprepare the vessel for the successful channeling of this energy.
The key practice is learning to feel, see, and utilize the cosmic energy known as Chi, Prana, or Life-Force. According to Yogic physiology the right and left channels Ida and Pingala have to be in balance for the Sushumna channel to open.
By Alex-engraver – Own work, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=12786255 Balanced expression of the mind, body, and spirit are essential, so be calm and guide Shakti to her rightful place through all 7 chakras to the crown. This is the key to enlightenment and it is why the figure of the Serpent is so central to the world’s religions. If you are living this experience, so matter how stressful and disorienting it is now, it is a great gift to put one’s foot upon the path. Hopefully, you can survive and be successful in your journey. Best of luck to you Cosmic Adventurer.
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We kill our shamans
One of the problems I encounter living as a mystic in the western world, is there is no respect for individuals living in altered states of consciousness. Whether drug induced, pursued through meditation or ecstatic practice, or the product of full-blown psychosis. The individual in an altered state is uniformly shunned, feared, beaten, incarcerated, or killed. It has been repeatedly shown even by western science, first in the 50s and 60s, then again starting with new research in the early 2000s that psychosis is functionally the same as dreaming while awake. (Tyrelll and Griffin BMJ 2007;335:91) In the developing world, and throughout history indigenous cultures have treated this as a gift and a source of great wisdom, while western culture has decided that it would rather harm or outright kill the waking dreamer.
As a mystic who entered my path as a result of repeated psychotic episodes, I have experienced first hand the carceral abuse and chemical destruction of the mental health industry, even going so far as to join that industry as a worker for a brief time to try and mitigate some of the abuse for the few people I could reach, and to validate the experiences of the psychotic. My research, both academic and subjective has led me to the conclusion that this society has shut out any hope of contacting greater reality in favor of the comfortable somnambulance of the world of death and destruction.
Plato’s Cave Academia and science have had a choice, the whole academy was based on Plato who explicitly stated that this world was an illusion and that pointing out the path to reality would likely get you killed. Furthermore, continuing hard scientific evidence that consciousness is fundamental to the nature of reality gets ignored or explained away when quantum experiments should absolutely prove that we should be studying the power of consciousness. Instead we rely on the medical model and the theory of disease to “treat” those we should be training to reveal visions, heal the sick, and predict the future as well a showing the gate to a realer reality than the one we are interacting in.
Frater Ponderator, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons On the Tree of Life the path upwards from our material world to the higher dimensions goes through the unconscious at Yesod. The only living people that can guide us on this path are those gifted individuals who are able to tread the unconscious while awake. They are the evidence that there is in fact another world. We can thank them for even knowing there is a possibility of an afterlife. The somnambulist, well adjusted to a sick and dying world, cannot be our guide out of the four-dimensional prison that we are in. While science edges ever closer to the admission that higher realms exist and magic is real, the increasing stress of just existing in the modern world pushes more and more towards psychosis. The disease is forcing us towards the cure whether the doctors like it or not. More mystics and shamans are slipping through the cracks. More weirdos are finding their comfort in alternative spiritualities and finding their voice on the Internet. Listen to them. Not everything the active psychotic says can be applied to the current reality, and you might have a hard time picking gems from psycho-babble but those of us that can travel back and forth between worlds do have something to offer. We need you normies of the West to please stop killing us and give us a space to share our gifts.
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Guided Meditation Om Mani Padme Hum
A friend needed a guided meditation video to help her focus and not fall asleep so I thought, why not make use of that neglected youtube handle and post a video. So here it is in all its AI enhanced glory. Enjoy.
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Towards a Science of Religion
In order to explain the religious beliefs I have developed over years of mysticism heavily influenced by the Western Mystery Tradition I thought I’d share this diagram:
Notice that unlike the many spurious attributions out there, I do not include the chakra system as equivalent to the tree of life. The chakras are part of the internal system and the crown chakra Sahasrara is not equivalent with the crown Sephira Kether. The system of yoga is a necessary prerequisite for traveling up the tree not a substitute for it. This can be seen in the attribution of the World trump, which symbolizes Kundalini awakening, to the first path leading from the terrestrial realm to the astral Sephiroth Yesod. Yoga is the practice that gives entrance to the tree, it does not subsume it. This is how religion should be practiced. Master yoga, and use the Tarot trumps to learn the riddles that are posed by the guardians of the paths. While astral projection can be learned and practiced to get some limited access to the astral Sephira; Yesod, Hod, and Netzach, this is essentially a dead end to further work, because astral projection occurs in a semi-conscious state and is over-shadowed by interference from the dream world as well as unprocessed impressions from daily life in Malkuth. In order to travel the tree with full consciousness, one must raise the Kundalini Serpent all the way up the spine and sustain it. This is not a small feat, and it is where many schools of yoga end. I would argue that it is the end of heaven-blindness and ignorance of the Source, but merely a beginning in the practice of mysticism. As such the diagram above is the only map one needs to explore higher dimensions through rigorous practice and devotion to Union with God.
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Morning Yoga Routine + Bonus Workout
Your humble editor recently got sober and decided it was well past time to get back to a regular yoga practice. In order to re-establish the habit, I decided to do my teacher training over again from start to finish. I am currently in week four and feeling major benefits. Given the success of my practice, I thought I’d share some videos from my teacher, which lay out a good routine to be practiced daily in the early morning, plus one workout video I like to add after meditation is done. The morning routine consists of 5 minutes of pranayama, a short asana routine of stretches, and then seated meditation. It makes up an ideal morning to start a positive day. Without further ado, here is Anmol Mehta to demonstrate.
And the bonus workout I do after a short break:
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DC NFT’s
So I snagged a couple of NFT’s from the DC fandome event and trying to figure out what use they are and what I want to do with them. I didn’t win the NFT lottery by winning these guys as they are both “common” but I think I can post them right? I barely somewhat understand the crypto I own and really don’t understand these things, but C’est la vie right?
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Dad Grass
Just ordered some joints from a company that’s selling CBD hemp flower as the way to get somewhat (maybe?) high. The company pines for the day of sneaking a pinch of old compressed mexi brown from your Dad’s stash. Billed as a much mellower smoke than the crazy engineered hydroponics and melt your brain strains available at the dispensary, it’s also the polar opposite of the dabs that all the kids are into these days. It’s also 100% legal to ship to all 50 states. While it seems crazy to me what I just paid to smoke rope, what the hell, I’d like a tiny head change without getting actually high. If this seems up your alley you can order from this link and get 10% off
