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

Managing Models
Energy Management Skills

Even when you encounter opposing thoughts, there is always a stable middle ground. Opposites such as external-internal, thesis-antithesis, and predator-prey, are better handled by knowing how to manage the models from which they originate. Thinking you have free will or not stems from interpreting an event based on personal conditioning, the nature of your cohesion, and usually stems from cultural cosmologies. The perception of free will may be rooted in the brain’s mechanisms, with the sensation of choice being created in memory, as there is evidence that electrical impulses signal an intention to act before a person is conscious of a decision being made.²⁶

Western philosophies tend to come down on the side of having free will, whereas Eastern systems are often comfortable with proposing that we don’t have free will. Holding your attention in between these opposing concepts produces more awareness of the events themselves. You become more aware of experience rather than being more aware of an interpretation about the experience. This is the tightrope of life as well as the remedy to fundamentalism.

The following deautomatization meditation helps deliver awareness to an in-between point, a place of no tension between opposing points of view. Experiencing balance between two contrary ideas provides direct knowledge that concepts are the building stones of reality, that realities can exist independently of one another, and that it is possible to derive value from not continually referring, and deferring, to a specific model.

Free Perception

Humans have long struggled with oppositions such as believing we have complete free will or that we have none, with seeing ourselves as cocreators of reality or just observers of that which already is, and thinking that there is no future or that the future is already fixed. If you have deep-seated beliefs regarding any of these concepts, temporarily suspend your beliefs and play for a moment in another sandbox. If you have difficulty forming an image or perception of any step, pick a thought or object that somehow relates to the step. I also suggest familiarizing yourself with all of the following steps prior to proceeding.

1. Visualize, feel, or otherwise perceive a sphere of energy representing the joy of having free will. Immerse yourself in this sphere and allow it to fill your entire being. Your decisions are yours. You have the natural freedom to make your own choices.

2. Place this energy aside for the moment and perceive an energy sphere representing the magnificence of not having free will. You are part and parcel of a divine order and you realize how intimately you are connected with the divine as you perform as an actor on a stage. Your part has already been given to you. Have fun with it.

3. Place both energies before you, equal in distance on each side of the center of your perception. Place your attention in between these energies. Find the balance point—the free perception point—where you are in harmony and feel no tension between the two energies.

4. Leaving that awareness, visualize, feel, or otherwise perceive a sphere of energy representing the brilliance of co-creating your reality. Through give-and-take, you interact with the entire cosmos and your reality is molded.

5. Placing this awareness momentarily aside, perceive an energy sphere representing the power of gradually becoming aware of that which already exists. Movement through time and space exists only as an exercise in perception. All time resides in the present and moving through space is the movement of mind. Everything always was and always will be. As you increase your awareness and travel through what we call time, you gradually become aware of that which already was, is, and always will be.

6. Bring both of these energies to the fore of your awareness. Go in between them to the free perception point. Allow whatever perceptions that occur to occur.

7. Leaving that awareness, in your own way perceive a sphere of energy representing that there is no future. The future manifests only as a result of what happens in the present. And the present is the present. “Future” is only a thought.

8. Place this energy aside for the moment and perceive an energy sphere representing the future as already existing. Rather than causing an event to happen as a result of your thoughts, you have those thoughts because the event has already occurred. All your actions are preordained. You travel through your feelings to the place where they have already happened. We are all catching up to find out what is already there.

9. Place both energies before you and place your attention in between them at the free perception point. Notice any and all results.

10. Using your imagination, form a triangle. The three points of the triangle represent the free perception points of steps 3, 6, and 9.

11. Inside, at the center of the triangle, find the free perception point, the place of no tension.

Figure 10.1. Free Perception Triangle

12. At the free perception point notice a speck of white light. Approach the white light, which grows larger, more brilliant. Place your attention at the threshold of the light.

13. Hold the question “What do I need to learn most at this very moment?” in your consciousness. Then feel free to ask anything you wish, like “What would be a good learning task?”

14. Leap into the white light. As you do, release your question and allow it to flow away from you into the light. Allow the answer to return in its own time by any means of perception.

15. Remain in the light as long as you wish. Return when you wish.

Each of these elements is a type of cohesion, a certain assemblage point position. Notice that the concepts of column A and column B are logically consistent. Not only is one secular and the other religiously oriented, being a co-creator with the divine follows the thought that you have free will and that you can use your will and intent to build your world. In the same manner, becoming aware of that which already is follows from having no free will and that the future is fixed in place. You can add to the elements in each column as long as all of the elements of a column remain consistent and can be logically related to each other.

When a sufficient number of elements have been brought together, you have a model, perhaps an entire philosophy and maybe a full-fledged reality. Use the exercise to step in between science and shamanism, for example, with science representing a world built through reason and shamanism a world formed through cohesion. By doing so, you won’t be bound by either yet may enjoy the fruits of each. The constellations of thought resulting from these approaches to life influence perception, which influences behavior, which influences experience. Experience then self-validates the respective philosophy, which produces a loop where perception and experience are already determined.

Finding the free perception point and using it to move the assemblage point is one of the more valuable results of commanding this skill. When perception is not hemmed into a point of view, it has greater freedom to move. This cleansing action may also be used as a deliberate step toward mastering imagination as this exercise represents stepping beyond the ordinary into what might be. In this manner, the ability to manage models provides a path for discovery.

Seeing

Seeing is cutting straight into streams of energy. It often carries a visual sense associated with perceiving different forms of light, but is not itself visual in the normal sense. As it requires using the entire body, this type of awareness makes sense from kinesthetic and intuitive channels. It consists of a shift in cohesion that establishes a relationship with the environment that activates this cornerstone. For this, you need to be mindful of your connection with the world and allow a type of communion to move you beyond normal perception.

Seeing may be unique to a person in the way information becomes conscious. The structure of light may vary while the meaning remains constant, for example. Two people could see differently but arrive at similar conclusions. There seems to be common features as well. An interesting anomaly, for instance, is that when a person sees during daylight, the environment becomes darker, and conversely a dark environment becomes lighter. Completely seeing another person’s energy body often translates as perceiving packages of luminosity. The energy body might appear as an oblong ball of light, and the surrounding world comprised of long strands of intense yet softly glowing strands of light.

A preliminary to seeing is gazing, or opening up. The Free Perception exercise is a good place to start. The following steps, here described in relation to seeing, can be used to develop any mode of perception. It is a deautomatization exercise that permits the energies forming cohesion to circulate more freely and allow new perceptions to surface to a conscious level.

1. Relax. Try to be nonattached to anything you perceive. Let go.

2. Establish your intent to gaze.

3. Don’t focus on the world as you normally might. Don’t pick out an object then look or stare at it. Let your eyes go “soft,” unfocused, but with a steady gaze. Your sight may be directed toward a specific object, but you simultaneously expand your vision to the full periphery.

4. Feel your body merge with the world. Remain centered within your body as you connect with the external world. Feel the flow of energy.

5. Gazing at shadows is very relaxing. You can use virtually any shadow to gaze at. To elevate the level of skill, form a full pattern of shadows in the same manner you would create a tree out of branches and leaves. Instead of attending to the normal features of leaves, branches, and so forth, you construct the tree from the shadows within it.

6. If you see a haze or rain of light, a thin film of energy, or what looks like swirling dots, let them be. Don’t focus on them or you will pull back your prior cohesion and refocus automatically on the ordinary, physical world. You’ll restore your normal habit of viewing the world. The light is the energy world breaking into your awareness; you are seeing. Later, when you gain more experience, you will be able to focus on that energy and it won’t disappear. You will then be able to expand that world. But until you train your eyes, and your body, your old habits of perception will rule. Later, you’ll have a new set of habits and can tap the world of energy anytime, anywhere.

Seeing automatically removes the influences of models. What you do with your experiences—how you interpret them—remains quite another matter. You might end up building elaborate models that have no lasting effect other than halting your growth. When seeing occurs, let go of habits, including those found in models, in order to take your skills of orchestrating various energies to the next level.

As with any learning, experience modifies your awareness in such a manner that you can make more sense of what is seen as you have more relation to it. At the same time, seeing removes you from preconceptions and accelerates learning. A gifted novice can see into a business problem, a scientific investigation, or the workings of the most advanced philosophical discipline. What is done with that awareness is yet another matter. A novice and master are both subject to the same learning dynamics; however, implementation of what is seen hinges on cohesion being developed to a corresponding level in order to act on the awareness. This is what the master has mastered.

Imagination

We live in the fabric of imagination, our portion of infinity. We experience its multifaceted landscapes and express this in terms of what we have learned. One way to work with imagination is through dreams, these being the stuff of imagination; in essence, they are one and the same. The following suggestions may help orient you.

1. When you recognize you are dreaming (either during sleep or daydreaming), drop your awareness into your gut. Odds are you’ll find yourself centered in your head as you chatter on about everything.

2. As you enter the region of will, feel yourself tracking the dream images. Set the objective of stabilizing this visual stream into a storyline, into a consistent dream environment. The procedure for this consists of simultaneously paying attention to yourself and the dream with the intent of participating inside the dream. This is more an athletic maneuver than an intellectual problem.

3. One of the more imposing obstacles to entering imagination is self-reflection. When the dream begins to shape up, you may reference the past, future, anxieties, joys, or what have you. After all, doing so is habitual. But here it is more than a distraction as you need to face into time, face forward into the emerging experience in order to fully participate inside the dream.

4. Experiment. Find exercises and maneuvers that work for you. These come of their own accord by paying attention to the entire experience—all aspects of what is occurring within you and of imagination. To give you an idea:

a. As outlined in chapter four, meditate until you enter blackness.

b. Then intend a shift into imagination. For instance, imagine you’re walking down a street in a foreign country, dressed in native garb. From inside the dream, position yourself in back of yourself. Hang back so you can watch yourself walking down the street. Keeping focused on the goal of entering imagination builds unbending intent.

c. Imagine that energy bodies begin to rain from the heavens. An energy body falls a little distance away but directly in front of you. Inside this energy body is a version of you, dressed as you are, and looking straight at you.

d. Place your attention inside the version of you that is walking down the street. Transfer your attention to the version of you that is inside the energy body, and then perceive the dream from that vantage.

e. Use this imaginative play to get a sense of transitions so you may surface inside the dream itself.

5. During these shifts, especially if you fully enter the dream, you may find yourself in a high-energy, high-potential zone where anything can happen. It is as though your assemblage point is free falling. Until cohesion stabilizes, you remain susceptible to any entrainment influence. The slightest fluctuation of thought or feeling can end or redefine the dream.

6. You may also feel movement, from floating to high-speed travel. Allow these sensations. Breathe easy and stay relaxed. You want the transition to begin and to end with your awareness inside the dream. With practice, you’ll figure our how to regulate speed, just like learning to walk or run.

7. You may also experience a range of sounds and vibrations. It may even feel as though a train is rushing past your doorstep or a tornado is crashing through your room. This is normal. Let the fright go and move on.

8. Surf the transition. To ride the wave you have to navigate it on its terms, all the while remaining centered within and focused on entering imagination.

9. Initially, your focus was to enter a dream. At some point, aim for another goal in order to apply your new ability. For instance, when inside imagination gaze at the dreamscape in order to see. You’re in heightened consciousness and this provides the wherewithal to become more proficient with your abilities. From within imagination, you’ll find seeing easier, keener, and more productive.

Imagination allows you to break free of conditioning to enjoy new models, new arrangements with your life. Seeing permits you to cut through to the essence of something, anything. Feeling offers an efficient means of guidance. Combined they intensify experience and boost learning. The use of these cornerstones and skills allows you to manage your energy body and chart new paths. They are the basics that may be applied to any stage of development allowing you to step through doorways of learning time and again.