Focus away from your body

[James S]

For me this is possibly the hardest part of the whole deal. I think I know what you mean about the 3rd person perspective. Until recently when meditating or doing energy work, when I visualised the energy flow through my body, I always seemed to be looking at myself from the left side. I don't think it was really a problem, but it annoyed me.

There are possibly as many methods to doing this as there are individuals doing it, but the following works well for me.

What I do is when my eyes are closed I first imagine that I'm looking at things "through" my eyelids, seeing everything from the same view as I would with eyes open. If you are sitting down imagine yourself slowly standing up and taking a few steps forward. Use your imagination to recreate this scene just as it would look with your eyes open. Keep your imaginary eyes in where they should be in your imaginary head. This might sound a bit dumb, but it's important.

If you do it right, your head is going to feel a little strange, because you are actually forcing your consciousness to move away from your body, and lets face it, it's been quite comfortable in there for many years.

Once you think you are comfortable just letting your imaginery eyes & head, and whatever other part of your body you wish to have with you stand there and take in things in full 3D,  now try something that will twist your brain - turn around and look at yourself sitting in the chair. This'll really give you a jolt, and you'll probably find your right back at square one looking at the back of closed eyelids.

Keep trying this, but not too much at one time. After you've tried a couple of times to look at yourself, wether successful or not, take a break. Your excercising your brain in a way it's never known before, and it takes a bit of practice and getting used to.

Once you get the hang of having you consciousness separated from you in this way, and it really doesn't matter how you use your imagination here, you will start feeling a strange kind of pressure in your head, maybe a sensation of floating, maybe of falling. Whatever the case, stay with the sensation and try you best to ignore your body. Once you've got the focus, concentrate on staying with it. Even if it's for only a couple of seconds, that's a couple of seconds you're consciousness has spent away from your body and started heading into the astral. Every little step is a good one.

Happy journeys,

James.

[Frank]

Problem is, your focal point of awareness normally resides behind the physical eyes and it's one heck of a habit to get out of. Typical problem being, the moment you perceive any kind of inner vision, immediately the physical eyes will habitually go to try and look. Which zaps you right back to C1.

What James says is *good* advice and it reminded me of something else you might try (which I used to often do as a "warm up" exercise during the day) is imagine in your mind doing a slow back flip. Imagine being in a room that is familiar to you. Then jump upwards and let your lower body come up and over, so you do a full backwards circle and land on your feet again - facing the same way.

As you turn, imagine in your mind how it would look from the point of view of your physical eyes. In doing this you are doing the same as James suggested in his post. In that you are making yourself imagine from a perspective that you don't normally come across (unless you are heavily into athletics, of course).

What I would advise you to do is to concoct several such mental scenarios:  where you perform an action and imagine yourself looking from a point of view you wouldn't normally come across. Then, when you come to practice the rundown to Focus 10/12, you'll be looking at yourself from just another different perspective.

I said on another post that the best time to practice is during the day. What I still often do, during waking hours (as I kind of mental warm-up), is practice holding basic shapes in mind.

Like, imagine a box that contained shapes. Now reach into the box and take a square. Give it some colour and imagine looking at the square from, say, 5 feet away. Now change the colour. Note the colour then change it again. Now imagine the other side is a different colour. Turn the square around so the other face, with the different colour, slowly comes into view as the previous face fades out.

Now turn the square into a cube. At first have each face the same colour. Imagine the cube turning in various directions and note as each face comes into view. Now have each face become a different colour. Turn it around again noting each coloured face as it comes into view. Now increase its size so it's about as tall as you are. Then have the cube stationary and imagine yourself walking around it.

Now have it suspended in mid air. Float above, underneath, and all around, noting the colour of each side. Shrink the cube and turn it back to square. Now try the same with a triangle turning it into a pyramid shape. Then a circle into a sphere, and so forth.

These kinds of mental exercises will GREATLY improve your inner vision, and can be performed almost anywhere, anytime you get a few minutes free.

Think of your inner vision as a completely separate faculty. At the moment it is like a muscle that has hardly ever been exercised, and you need to gently coax it into doing some work for you. Every time you imagine seeing some basic shape in mind (or imagine seeing anything in mind for that matter), you are exercising that muscle.

Just a little, here and there, twenty or thirty times a day. And after a few months that muscle will be bulging out of your forehead.

Yours,
Frank

[clandestino]

hi TheJza, hows it going ? I think I started wave 1 at around the same time as you, ...i remember we were both pretty interested in the gateway pointers thread.

I was having difficulty making the focus 10 exercise a regular part of my day, but over the past 2 weeks I now do it daily, after some physical exercise, whilst lying on my bed.

I am encountering a similar problem, in that it is hard to hold the 1st person viewpoint. However, I've noticed that over the past 2 weeks it is gradually becoming easier to do. At the moment, I'm finding my attention is "flickering" between :
1) lying on my bed in a deeply relaxed state
2) being aware in the third person
3) being aware in the first person.....actually feeling that my conciousness has moved "somewhere".

I made some good progress on this last night........When I move to focus three, I imagine that I am walking across a beach to a sheltered area with 3 palm trees and a hammock; one of my friends is there to greet me, and I normally imagine jumping into the hammock and relaxing, whilst perceiving the surroundings (the sea, the warmth of the beach etc).

Last night, I was actually feeling as if I was in the hammock, completely!!!  It was actually ME lying there, not in my bed !! the feeling would only last about 10 secs at a time, but this 10 seconds is an improvement on what i could do 2 weeks ago.

There are (i think) a couple of reasons why I've been able to hold my focus in the 1st person for longer periods of time :

1) On the 1st day that i realised I had made some progress, maybe 3 weeks ago,  this instilled in me greater curiosity and excitement - I'm consequently approaching the focus 10 exercise in a more positive frame of mind, expecting results.

2) The past week or so, I am noticing that I know EXACTLY the point in the CD where Monroe makes a comment to proceed to the next part of the exercise......Because I am beginning to become accustomed to this, I no longer feel rushed at any point. Instead, KNOWING when I should move to the next part of the exercise means I am able to let the words flow over me - they are not taking up any of my attention, and I can put more of my resource into imagining.

I'm still a long way off holding my focus .... I flick back to C1 very easily.

But I'm on the way !! practice, practice, practice !
Mark

[TheJza]

Thanks for the replies.

John S: I'll try what you suggested.

Frank: It is funny that you say the Day time is the best time to practice. When I do the Cd in the morning before work (which I just did), this is the toughest time. My eyes are constantly moving behind my eyelids and snapping me back to looking at the black behind my eyelids. When I practicer at this time of the day, I stay too awake and in C1, and when I practice at night, I am too passive and usually fall asleep. How fun!
Would the 2 circle exercise you posted about a while ago (where you make a + from the - and | circles) help at all?

Clandestino: I had to take a break with doing the CD because of work. We are in crunch time and I was stressed. I have picked it back up and am trying to do it twice a day but usually only do it at night. I am getting up earlier (like today) so that I can do the CD in the morning. Still nothing to post about, but if I am able to get to F10 like Frank, I think anybody in the world should be (everyone probably says that!) :}

Thanks again for the replies.

[AndrewTheSinger]

Hello TheJza.

A different opinion:

What I think it's happening to you is a connection problem. The action going on the right side of your view can be a visualization problem, but the 'everything turning black again' is not.

What happens is that our conscious mind thinks in analog. It unites/links things that we understand to make something logical, therefore it has a hard time understanding things that don't have a sequence, things that are not somehow linked to anything else that we understand.

You said things seem to go until you try to take the role and play it in the first person, but there is a gap there. Your mind just can't accept you jumping in the scene 'from nowhere', so it goes "Wait! I don't know how to do that, lets start again". And there you go to the trance again.

What you can do is to make a bridge between you and the action that is going. Maybe by making the character invite you in so you can change places. Or you can acknowledge the presence of your astral body watching everything, and then interact with the scenery and the characters, and that will instantly bring you into the scene.

For instance, if you feel like you're watching tv or looking through some binoculars, you can stretch out your astral hands and touch, and turn a mental projection into astral projection.

If you're not good at the visualization exercises yet and you get across a situation where you suddenly go blind, you can continue with what you're doing and soon you'll regain vision. If you're walking and lose sight, if you're swimming and lose sight, just carry on with whatever you're doing, feel yourself still there and you might be able to see again in a few seconds. This just won't apply to situations where you're doing something and decide to do something else that has no relation to the prior cause of the analog conflict thing.

[IanWilson]

TheJza...

Keep rockin' the bineural beats boyaaa!

Ian

[Frank]

quote:Originally posted by TheJza:
Frank: It is funny that you say the Day time is the best time to practice. When I do the Cd in the morning before work (which I just did), this is the toughest time. My eyes are constantly moving behind my eyelids and snapping me back to looking at the black behind my eyelids.  

Funny, the very moment I read the sentence about your eyes moving the 2-circles exercise came to mind, which you went on to suggest. Yes, I think it may be beneficial as it helps relax the eyes and enables you to hold a soft focus for a period of time.

Yours,
Frank

[TheJza]

I had an interesting experience today. I did the CD around 6pm and I was tired from having to go into work. I thought I was going to fall asleep, but decided to practice anyways. I got to the F3 part, and then started drifting off.
I started seeing things that was not like Lucid Dream sight or even Hypnagogic images, but something else that is hard to explain.
It was more along the lines of me drifting off to sleep and I saw a person that I was talking to, then knowing that I was sleeping. At this point I saw the black behind my eyelids and then, superimposed onto that was a 2D Image of the person that I was talking to in my semi sleep state. This happened a few times and was pretty weird. I was pretty much gone when Bpb was counting from 4 to 10, then I felt a surge back to full C1 when Bob was giving the affirmations during the last part of F10. Kinda weird, I hope I made sense.

[TheJza]

In Frank's Gateway pointers he says to Focus away from your body, and to have a Focal Point where you imagine yourself running through the instructions to be either first person or as close to it as possible.
I am doing Wave 1 on a recliner and when I sit back and start to imagine the action taking place, I notice that it is more of a full Third Person view I am taking. Also, everything is off to the right, which makes it very hard to actually convert the third person to first person scenery. So, when I notice this happening I try and imagine everything going on directly in from of me, but the problem with that is I invariably always come back to just looking at the black behind my eyelids.
Any suggestions?