Shamanism for the Age of Science: Awakening the Energy Body - Kenneth Smith 2018

Levels of Imagination
The Formation of Reality

In the course of learning, imagination achieves different levels, which indicates the ability to manage more of your energy body. These are adapted from Toltec dreaming gates. Don Juan taught that there are seven gates and in Toltec Dreaming I have outlined these and others. In this light, dreaming and imagination are one and the same, different terms that both mean the stimulation of the second energy field. To illuminate energy body function, I will outline the first four.⁵

These levels also reflect incremental expansion of the first field through the energy body. Learning is often defined as a lasting change in behavior,⁶ and this is exactly what stretching out the first field produces as changes in behavior reflect having developed new cohesions. With each new level, more insights and abilities are gained. How these are expressed in your daily world depends on the individual. Because of the human species’ uniformity, however, most everyone experiences common features.

Level One

In waking life, imagination makes itself known in an assortment of ways—intense imagery, flights of seeming fancy, and so on. Level one, though, is that of consciously entering the home ground of imagination, of intentionally accessing the second field.

In the beginning, imagination is akin to meditation. Meditative exercises often begin by sitting quietly and relaxing with eyes closed. To stimulate this level of imagination, pay attention to the emerging darkness as though you were falling asleep. Attend to the darkness until you find yourself immersed in a heavy, but not unpleasant, blackness. This is the precursor to properly tapping imagination. It also recharges your energy; being in this state for ten hours may seem like mere minutes. Being able to reside in the blackness marks a significant step, so don’t think you aren’t accomplishing anything just because “nothing is happening.”

The next step is to entertain whatever images emerge from the blackness. At first, you may not notice images. Gently gazing in the direction of your forehead with your eyes closed may help. Let the images come and go as they may. Practicing with purpose and patience will help you to turn the corners of perception. Eventually you will learn to stabilize and direct these images, to control your dream.

Level Two

Attaining the second level allows you to behave from within imagination. It rests on having learned to maintain the stream of images. You may even find yourself entering the stream of images and flowing with them in a manner similar to waking life. This is characteristic of lucid dreaming, or becoming awake within a dream.⁷

In level two, you can also control your imagination by changing the terrain. Normally, dreams change: dream to dream, scene to scene. At this level you have choice; you have intentionality within the dream. To advance, don’t get lost in the details or in obsessing about your magnificent achievement. Don Juan advises us to remain attentive to the experience without succumbing to it.⁸

When you center in imagination you gain a stillness that allows you to imagine from within imagination, to have another dream from within the dream. This is the way to prepare for level three: imagine a completely new environment from within imagination. From this vantage point, you are confronted with the multilevel nature of reality. It is also yours to enjoy. The steps to do this are simple: know you want this to occur, and then intend it.

Level Three

An interesting aspect of imagination, this level embodies astral projection, or what is commonly referred to as an OBE, and involves using an imagination body—an imagining—to travel, whether the destination is in imagination or the physical world. This helps you solidify your imaginative gains.

An OBE is just one form of other-than-physical-body experience. A key point is that these experiences are within the energy body. While you may have the perception of being out of your physical body, OBEs occur within the wider scope of human anatomy. There is no projecting into another external dimension. However, there is a shift of cohesion, which enables you to focus on different parts of the inter-dimensionality within you that correspond to the extra-dimensionality of emanations.

A classic OBE has three components. First, consciousness is exteriorized away from the physical body. You may view your physical body from your bedroom ceiling or from across a room. Second, the localization of this nonphysical perspective has form of some kind. It might resemble your physical body in that you experience having arms, legs, shoulders, and so on. This is most often the case, probably due to the ingrained habit of how we participate with the world. It might also take some other form like that of an animal, often an effect of someone who is firmly on a traditional shamanic path. The longer you stay in this state or the more frequently you engage it, the form tends to shift to a sphere. From this perspective, viewing a 360-degree panorama is common. If you choose, you can also replicate your physical senses. You can see, hear, smell, touch, and taste. Third, the form is animated and has emotions.

A spontaneous OBE may leave a person wondering what occurred. Without context, without an inventory that includes them, repeated OBEs may cause a person to think he’s losing his mind. Such was the case with Robert Monroe as outlined in his notable book Journeys Out of the Body.⁹ Investigating the phenomena, he expanded his inventory to include them and so expanded his mind. OBEs then became “normal.”

Out-of-body experiences are not dry in the sense of just being aware, which may be the case in other types of psychic ability such as remote viewing.¹⁰ As a distinct mode of perception, the OBE carries the capacity for different kinds of movement, feelings, and emotions. As a result, you can interact with your surroundings as you would from your physical body. The similarities to perceiving from within your physical body, plus the enhanced capabilities, make OBE a great way to learn.

Since learning is the perception of ever-increasing order, if you learn OBE you’ve expanded your perception of order and can thereby participate in more enhanced structures of consciousness. Through learning, you connect with potential, which consists of order existing outside the conscious part of mind but is still a natural part of our makeup, and in this manner the unknown becomes known. OBE, then, serves to illustrate a process that applies to all learning.

From a bioenergetic perspective, OBEs indicate a shift of coherence that then produces a cohesion enabling different perceptions. The first two levels of imagination rely on purposefully shifting cohesion by creating constructive coherence. Level three requires you to stabilize coherence, which intensifies the experience. Level four takes it all to a professional level.

Level Four

This is when you target your OBEs to precise locations in your physical world, such as deliberately traveling to another city. Level four indicates a marked ability to merge the first and second energy fields: an OBE is of the second field; when you can place your experience in your daily world, you hook together the two fields. You are managing your resources. At this point, a new process based on synthesizing these fields unfolds. It therefore reflects a major step in awakening your energy body and places you firmly on the path toward actualization and being.

Advanced Levels

The next levels of imagination continue a step-by-step method of bending the energy body’s uniformity away from the conscious and unconscious and into the supraconscious. This highlights the work of the modern shamans: an examination of the human condition magnified by explorations of the third field. Each level represents a shift and restabilization of the assemblage point, another marker of learning. At a certain point will activates, thereby permitting further ability to manage the energy body.

In these arenas, imagination is vast and the experiences powerful and often tumultuous. The realm of imagination has always been so; but in these levels it is personally witnessed. Each new assemblage point position also changes your orientation to reality. It becomes possible to perceive regions of existence that were at one time literally beyond imagination.

Humans have a natural drive toward completion. The levels of imagination provide a means to take on the adventure of fully bringing your energy body to life. Your known-conscious world will collapse—or expand, depending on your view—time and again. Knowing the dynamics serves to buffer the turmoil and integrate the new. It is all a matter of learning.