thoughts and questions on NEW

[widfis]

ben-
when mr bruce is describing awareness hands he leaves the term more open for interpretation- you dont have to have the feeling of actual hands passing through you it is all just different methods of being aware of different parts of your body. it sounds like you can do this just fine so you should have no problem...but if there is any part on your body that you cannot feel with your awareness it helps to physically scratch this part of your body lightly so that the feeling resonates after you scratch it and therefore centers your awareness here...
hope this helps

[Matthew Kingsley]

While I do New Energy Ways I begin with remembering how it feels to
have the sole of my foot stroked with a wide, thick, dry paint brush.
The sensation is a tickling and almost flinching sort of feeling. I take extra time to actually apply the feeling of the brush on the
soles of my feet. A slight tingling begins on the soles of my feet.

I take my awareness hands and using touch feeling sensation I imagine myself quickly sweeping my hands over the soles of one of
my feet. My hands glide through my sole with no resistance and I continue up my leg with my hand in a cupped position. I reach
the fold of my leg and push as hard as I can the collected energy into my base chakra ( located at anal entrance ). This takes me
one or two seconds.

I give my base chakra a moment to absorb the gathered energy. A throbbing surging sensation is felt for a moment and then the
same action is applied to the other leg.

I lay on my back to do New Energy Ways. I would like to say, when I'm in the action of drawing energy up my leg, my imagination
flicks back and forth between touch feeling sensory input and what the process would look like if I were watching my imaginary
hands doing the task of bringing energy up my leg. Meaning I feel myself doing it and my mind also flicks into seeing myself doing
it. Although seeing myself doing it is fruitless and as far as I have determined from experience, it hinders the trance state. Feeling
myself doing it is what counts. So push the sight of it away while happily feeling with your hands. It becomes real fun when you
enter trance while doing New Energy Ways. The touch feeling sensation of drawing up energy with your hands is enhanced
greatly. It actually feels like your doing it with your physical hands, and you can feel your hands strongly in your legs drawing
energy into the base chakra.

This is my experience with New Energy Ways

Matthew Kingsley
winterman@vif.ca

[goku22]

Thanks for the replies. Widfis, I agree that he leaves it open to interpretation, and that's what I've done. I wanted to hear about if other people have done the same, modify NEW to work for them. Matthew, I've had the same experience with visualizing NEW at the same time as feeling it, and having it mess it up a little. Feeling is definitely the way to go. I do pretty much the same as you, except that despite my large interest in fantasy, magic, metaphysics, the occult, etc..., I must be a realist at heart because when I use my awareness hands, they "feel" like real hands and since I've never had my real hands phase through matter, my imagination rejects it when I try to get them to do it to my flesh. I can accept energy following my mental direction and flowing through my body, but not my hands. I guess since I'm a massage therapist and I have very developed sense of the the give and take of matter pushing against other matter, it has me resisiting my hands passing through my flesh even more. In my mind, flesh "gives" but it doesn't just open up it's electron structure and allow my atoms to pass through it. Anyway, making the hands seems like alot more effort than simply "feeling" the energy do it's thing to me. Ben

[Cruel Tendencies]

In my understanding, the use of awareness hands, or paint-brush and pencil-stirring analogies, are all for the purpose of developing the mobile body awareness and tactile imaging skills needed to move energy around.  Most people who've never done anything with energy or meditation, if you tell them "move your awareness to your foot," they'll either just start thinking about their foot, or won't know what to do.  Once you're capable of feeling the energy and moving your awareness around, I don't really see the use of awareness hands as necessary.


Paul

[goku22]

Cool, me neither. Ben

[goku22]

When practicing NEW my mind completely rejects using awareness hands, I've ben doing it for years now, and I just can't make myself allow my "hands" to go through my body. I don't see this as a hindrance, because I can do NEW just fine with pure tactile imaging and mobile body awareness. I simply "feel" and area strongly and move that feeling around. Everything works great and I get all the tingles and fellings of well-being (from the breathing exercises). I was wondering about any of your thoughts on the matter of awareness hands and using NEW in general. I know that not using my awareness hands will make it harder to use RB's techniques for projection, since they are mostly based on them, but I'll find a way around it. I'd like to know about other people's experiences with modifying NEW to work for them, and general experiences with all those nice sensations NEW causes.  Ben