Bliss every moment

The track-walking exercise posted yesterday was one of a series of exercises where we exploit some C1-level fear to kick off a dose of C5-level bliss. In that one we used fear of falling (a whole seven inches) in a safe, controlled way (provided no trains came through) to coax bliss to arise in consciousness, followed by a pause to experience whatever came up.

When C5 bliss is completely integrated into our being, what happens? For one thing, bliss becomes a background of every experience in our lives. See a bird? Bliss. Touch a tree? Bliss. Stub your toe? Bliss. Ouch, but bliss. So what we're doing here is learning not just to experience bliss moments, but to be those moments, and to get used to the idea of experiencing that bliss all the time. We're artificially inducing bliss, but if we get good at it, we won't have to coax bliss out of its hiding place. Instead, it will arise spontaneously as part and parcel of every conscious experience we have.

Right now, the 'higher' forms of consciousness show themselves from time to time. But depending on where we are in our personal development, what happens when a circuit we're not integrated with becomes active? Since we haven't integrated that circuit, instead of experiencing that higher consciousness, the opposite happens. We experience, if you can call it that, a moment of un-consciousness. In other words, something has happened that we don't identify with, so instead we suspend our identification with the moment, and we are unable to access what just happened.

By the way, perhaps the reason drugs can be used to access higher conscious experiences is that we project agency onto the drug, and thus allow ourselves to experience their wierd effects. We miss that the experience comes from ourselves, not from the drug, because our very identity does not allow us to be the source of the experience. But as many writers point out, the drug is not the source of the higher consciousness, it is at best a catalyst of our natural ability. A distracting one at that. Once you start to identify the real source within yourself, drugs won't seem very natural or desirable.

If we are based in C1-survival mode, the closest we get to C5 bliss is perhaps satisfaction of some bodily need, like a full belly. Or the cozy feeling we have when the house is warm and we relax on the couch. These feelings are nice, but they are only a vague shadow of what we could experience if C5 was a full part of our being. And in the case of a 'negative' experience, like stubbing our toe, the closest to bliss we experience is 'it feels so good when the pain stops'. An even dimmer shadow of the real thing.

The simple exercises like Walk the Tracks work pretty well, because they exploit the negative experience, but remove the actual negative and fearful object. So we are left only with that moment of feels-good, without the distraction of the actual fearsome situation. Perhaps I could post some exercises rooted in satisfaction; these might be more pleasant, but after bliss arises it might be confusingly mixed with the satisfaction aspect. I think we're more likely to have an indentifiable dose of C5 starting with the negative situation, at least at first.

Looking at Walk the Tracks, the moment where bliss tends to arise is right after the removal of the fear stimulus. So, when we end our balancing walk, or perhaps after we fall off the rail and pause to say we're finished. So the bodily perception of balance or lack of balance is removed, then bliss arises. Here we may have only noticed the bliss because we were primed to pause and look for it there. Are there other times bliss might arise, where we can see it if we remember to look?

As you integrate bliss and become C5-awakened, bliss will happen all the time. Quite literally. Any sense-experience will be accompanied by bliss. For now, work on catching the blip of bliss as the peak of the sense-experience fades. In other words, after your attention is drawn to its object, put a bit of that attention on the bliss that accompanies that object.

Now, how about times when attention is fully withdrawn from objects of the senses? What happens at those times? If we're lower-circuit based, the very thing (the senses) that we identify with, goes inactive. So we have two choices. The normal option is that we simply go unconscious. The second is that as we grow our higher faculties, we observe the shutdown of the senses, and directly experience the appearance of the higher consciousnesses. We'll use this second mode as an opportunity later on the path.

So when does this sense-shutdown with the automatic arisal of the higher conscousnesses happen? Often, if you know when to look. The classic examples are at the moment of falling asleep, during orgasm, when you sneeze, etc., and at the moment of death. Some of these are easier to work with than others :-)

If you work with awakening C5-bliss, you may find something interesting happen as you fall asleep. There will come a moment in the process where the senses perceptibly shut down, giving rise to a floaty blissful moment. Floaty because the body-proprioception sense shuts down along with vision and hearing and the rest. Your experience of the sense shutting down may be sudden, gradual or sequential. And then a time of bliss. Bliss may shut down, too, as even the subtle aspects of conscious experience go dormant. At the end comes a moment of complete fully-awakened consciousness, which the vast majority of us will totally miss because we're not higher-circuit based, yet. So our falling-asleep sequence will include the initial signs of consciousness dissolving or going dormant; we may be able to recognize or experience this dissolution, but unless we're fully C1-C8 integrated, at some point we lose it and go unconscious. So we sleep. Sometimes this might be annoying to our partner :-)

Make this your goal, then. You're going to experience bliss whenever possible. When something scares you, when something pleases you, whenever your sensory experiences change or shutdown. And get a good night's sleep, but notice that falling-asleep dissolution thing. It may be a sign of progress in your daytime practice.

Walk the Tracks

Today I want to present a really simple C1/C5 exercise.

A number of the exercises I'll be posting are based on the idea that a challenge to one of the lower circuits, C1-C4, when resolved can stimulate an activation of the corresponding higher circuit (C5-C8). In this exercise we'll challenge C1 in a fairly safe way, which if successful, will cause the bliss of C5 to arise in consciousness.

If you recall, C1 is basically associated with survival. And C5 is associated with ecstasy. I'm not a biochemist, but I would associate C1 challenges with adrenaline, and C5 bliss with endorphins. So all you have to do for this exercise is

1. Run a marathon

No, not really! You could do the above, running until your body tells you you're going to die, live that fear, then get the rush of a second wind. Here we're going to do something a little less strenuous :-)

This exercise is called 'Walk the Tracks'. We'll challenge the C1 survival instinct of fear of falling. About seven inches.

First, find a nice safe train track on which to walk. Don't choose an active line, and if you do, make sure you can get safely away if a train comes. We are not working on the C1 challenge of fear of collision with a locomotive :-) ...

Now, walk on one of the rails as far as you can before losing your balance and falling those seven inches. Go fast or slow, whatever puts you right on the threshold of challenge. If it's too easy, you won't get any adrenaline going! So if you have excellent balance, make it harder on yourself. Close your eyes, walk faster, whatever it takes.

That's it!

Now that you know all the details, and while you're still at your computer, consider proper preparation for this exercise. As always, you should be well rested, not hungry but not bursting at the seams from a huge breakfast, not hot or cold. In other words, you should not have any other C1 issue bothering you before you focus on the challenge of not falling. Also, you should have in mind a clear goal of what we're trying to accomplish here. Better balance is not the goal. Becoming more frightful of failing is not the goal, and being able to walk further along the rail than any of your friends isn't, either. The whole goal is using a challenge to C1 to stimulate C5.

We're also not trying to generate bliss for the sake of generating bliss. Keep in mind that later on in the journey, we want to be able to use this bliss as needed to foster further spiritual growth. What does that mean? We'll explore that later, but for now keep in mind that the bliss that may arise from doing this exercise is not the end goal. However, experiencing that bliss, recognizing it as part of ourselves, integrating it into ourselves, and being aware of it to the point that we could easily explain it to others, that is the goal.

So on the C1 side, work on recognizing the fear of falling. And recognize your own ability to overcome that fear, either through controlling your body to the point where the fall is not going to happen, or to recognize that fear for what it is -- a survival instinct intended to keep you from being careless when climbing Half-Dome. Once the fear gives way to a recognition of what the fear is, you can experience the fear, recognize it as part of your self, integrate it, and be aware of it to the point that you could easily explain it to others.

I look forward to anyone's report of their experiences with this simple exercise!

Circuit 1 as a path to Circuit 5

Antero Alli in his works describes an interactive relationship between the four 'lower' circuits and the four 'higher' circuits. For each pair of 'lower' and 'higher', he describes how stability rooted in the 'lower' state provides a support for the corresponding 'higher' circuit. In turn, the experience and 'shock' of the 'higher' state strengthens and stabilizes the experience of the 'lower' curcuit.

Today I want to start exploring exercises that takes advantage of the mutual relationship between circuit 1 and circuit 5. Let's start with Alli's summary of Circuit 1:

C-1 Bio-Survival Intelligence...the will to survive
fixations: food, shelter, self-preservation, material goods, safety and security
anchor: degree of physical confidence earned and maintained to assure survival

Of course, this summary is from

http://www.paratheatrical.com/pages/talkingraven/INTOXICATION.html

or perhaps other locations on the internet. The same site summarizes Circuit 5 as:

C-5 Somatic-Sensory Intelligence via the Body and Five Senses
Currents: rapture, communion with nature, body wisdom, tantra (yoga, meditation, ritual), charisma, second
wind, falling in love (endorphins). The shock of Ecstasy and Bliss (absence of suffering)

C1 sounds like the most basic of needs ... without satisfying the needs focused on by the consciousness of C1, you die. Or at least, you are unable to focus on anything else. Certainly you aren't going to be much interested in or capable of operating in any of the 'higher' states. So before anything else in life, you have to have the 'anchor' of C1 in place; you have to have that feeling that you have what you need to survive physically, that you're not going to die of starvation, etc.

Probably most of us have C1 pretty much under control. If we're not stuck on C1 (read that addiction to any of the fixations of C1), we have the confidence needed to progress from C1 to C2 and onwards. And C1 -> C2 and on is the normal orderly evolutionary progression from helpless blob to, oh, King of the Universe or something. Yes, some beings are stuck on C1. That would include most animals, perhaps some sort of craving spirit beings if these exist (I can't recall ever meeting one!), people at the mercy of famine or war, etc. Next step up would be the hoarders, food addicts, bacteriaphobes, etc., who may have the resources to survive but who do not yet have the confidence needed to progress much beyond the C1 stage. But like I say, most of us have most of our C1 issues under control and are probably more focused on C2, C3 or C4.

Now, eventually we want to get all the circuits activated and integrated. What will we be like then? It's pretty much impossible to comprehend in our current condition, but read some of the descriptions of the higher circuits on the links provided in the Welcome post. We might end up as Deities, or Buddhas, or Angels, or something like that. Kind of hard to say at this point, but whatever the final result, 'it looks pretty good from here' ...

Though the most orderly progression is C1 -> C2 -> C3 -> ... -> C8, we don't necessarily have the leisure to go that route in our brief lifetimes. So let's take the tack that we have to do whatever it takes, right now, to activate all the circuits, permanently and safely, as quickly as possible. We don't have much choice; we could die at any time and however far we got on the path, that's all we going to get, at least in this lifetime. Why wait?

I've strayed a bit to give this background, so now back to the point of this post.

Once C1 is fully integrated and C1 issues are not problems for us, we have the support we need to start activation of C5. Without C2 to C4 fully integrated, there are dangers, though. Or at least, classic spiritual approaches are full of warnings about what could be interpreted as the activation of C5. For instance, I interpret the the physical and mental pliancy translated by the Tibetans as 'shin-jang', characteristic of the Buddhist 'Perfection of Concentration', as being at least part of the bliss/ecstasy of C5 activation. The Buddhist meditation commentaries are full of warnings not to get stuck on this bliss; one such warning lists among the faults of incorrect meditation 'attachment to the bliss produced by meditating'. Yes, bliss is nice :-) ... but it can be an obstacle to further growth. When you experience bliss, it's something like a shock to your system, and it's very attractive. This C5 bliss performs like a complete negation of the C1 class of problems. C1 is about sufferings that threaten your existence and physical well-being, and the C5 bliss feels like the absence of all that suffering. When you're in this bliss, you can't even imagine sufferings like being hungry or having sore muscles, and the satisfaction that comes from having a good meal or relaxing on the couch after stacking hay bales all day seem pretty insignificant. So the C5 bliss is something you naturally want to keep going.

Personal observation: Years ago I attended quite a few (two hundred? five hundred? lost count!) Grateful Dead shows. As I attended without the influence of 'music helper', I had the chance to observe a lot of 'heads who had something more than granola and spring water in their systems. And you could group those 'heads into two broad categories ... I called them the 'Party Deadheads', those who were in search of the Eternal High, and the 'Spiritual Deadheads', those who seemed to be focused beyond the hedonism and excitement of the moment, who could be found watching out for each other and for strangers who might be having a 'bad trip', who exuded love instead of adrenaline and testosterone. What was the difference between these two groups? Perhaps the 'Party' group was trapped in the drug-induced C5 bliss and had not yet integrated it as a part of themselves, and perhaps the 'Spiritual' group had a wider viewpoint that went beyond feeling good for their own sake. In other words, one group was C5-activated but more C1+/- focused; the other was C5-activated but had a higher focus. Of course I don't know what these peoples' experience really was, so I can't validly judge or conclude what was going on. But my ignorant conclusion appeared to fit what I was seeing. Don't know that I've ever encountered a more interesting place to people-watch, by the way :-) ...

Anyway, there seems to be a real danger of activating C5 without a solid basis in the lower C's, expecially C1. So I warn against exploring bliss if you do not yet have the confidence of C1 integration. How to tell? How much of the time are you worrying about the issues of C1? If you are addicted to food, material goods, security and the rest, know that these issues need to be addressed as fully as possible before flipping any C5 switches. Otherwise, I fear your C1 survival addictions will give way to escapism, to a pointless bliss-addiction, be it via alcohol, pills, marathon running, codependent relationships, yoga workshops, sitting cross-legged in the snow, whatever. On the other hand, committment to resolving your C1 issues has a bonus result of preparing you for C5 and beyond ... so get working on it!

Next time we'll discuss some really simple ways to use the issues of C1 to activate, in small and quite safe ways, the bliss of C5.

Welcome!

Welcome to the adventure! This blog explores consciousness-expanding exercises in the context of the 'Eight-Circuit Consciousness' model expounded by Timothy Leary, Robert Anton Wilson, Antero Alli and others. For a succinct description of this model, see the following links:

http://www.paratheatrical.com/pages/talkingraven/INTOXICATION.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/8-Circuit_Model_of_Consciousness
http://deoxy.org/8circuit.htm

You can also find a number of discussion groups around the internet with just one Google :-) ...

Before we begin, let me note that there are a number of approaches for activating the 'higher' states of consciousness. These include the 'drug' methods and the 'non-drug' methods. Being a good-old law-abiding American citizen with a wife and family, I shall be exploring the 'non-drug' methods. I cannot speak for or espouse in any way the 'drug' methods; my personal opinion is that these might be useful in a carefully-controlled context, but that they come with some inherent dangers, not the least of which are the risks of arrest, property seizure, divorce, etc. So let's not even go there. Also, let's take the example of one of the legal drugs: alcohol. Sure, you can trigger altered states of consciousness with just beer, but when you do, typically your body will be so out of sorts that you will be rather limited in what you can do with those altered states. Implicit in this discussion is the idea that the altered states are not necessarily the end goal; rather, they are a tool for personal growth and personal development. In other words, we're not just here to party; after the exploration is finished we want to bring back something useful for ourselves, our families, our society, our planet, our universe.

A hangover, though easily achieved, is not the goal :-)

Another thing. There is a well-received book out there by Antero Alli, available from Falcon Press for a very reasonable price, entitled "Angel Tech". I have not read this book. From what I know of the book (which could be wrong!), Alli presents many practical exercises for activating the different circuits of consciousness. Wait, isn't that what this blog is all about? Yes it is, and that's why I've decided not to read Alli's book at this time. I want this blog to explore the terrain from a fresh standpoint, one not colored by Alli's experience. So there is the possibility that one of the exercises explored here may duplicate something Alli presents. That's okay; if that happens it would tend to validate both what Alli writes and what we discuss here. It will be interesting if some approach gets explored in both sources but with different conclusions! Then, you the reader will have to explore both results and resolve the issues yourself. In any case, I hope some of you will take the discussion here seriously and will share your thoughts and experiences with the rest of our readers!

Perhaps after we've explored this a little, opening Alli's book will be more appropriate. For you, the reader, it might be appropriate right now to explore Alli's work. I don't want to slow anyone's journey; I simply want to keep the exploration here unswayed by Alli's until at least we have a solid basis for comparison. I don't want to fall for the tendency to parrot another's experience before I have my own, perhaps. All in good time, though if you're human, time is both short and uncertain!

So, welcome aboard, and I hope this voyage takes you someplace 'higher'!