Session 09 June 2009

[Joe]

Re: Have I asked in the right way?

There's a "big" question I've wanted to ask for a long time now and this thread made me finally feel that now is the right time to ask it. Since I'm in a kind of "blue mood" today the matter may come out as "asking for sympathy", but that's not what I'm after. I just want to know how you guys see this and understand my/the situation better. So here goes:

Reading books by Laura (Wave and others), other recommended books and this forum is good, very helpful and has changed my life and viewing of life big time. However, I somehow feel like I'm "cheating" - reading brilliant books by brilliant researchers, but not "inventing" any stuff my self - the catalyst is always someone else. I mean, I would probably never have come to the idea of doing "critical channeling" and spending many years making it work, not to mention have the strength and wits to do it.

Laura, Ark and others have done so much, and as the C's have said, they've been through very difficult times, done a huge amount of work and asked in a right way (to get the chance to communicate with them) to gain the knowledge and experience they now have. So, my question really is this: Can I see myself having asked "the question" in a right way, since I've found you guys and learning all this great stuff (from you)? Those of us that don't have such brilliant minds and energy/drive to read through tons of research and books - are we just "taking a free ride" by reading e.g. The Wave?

To sum it up and to exaggerate: Who am I kidding? I'm just a opera singer who reads a lot of books...I'm not going to meet those great alchemist guys in the Pyrenees now am I?

Sorry feeling kind of depressed... :(

I'd say there are many ways to give back for what you have received. You don't have to be a trail blazer yourself. Find ways to dedicate yourself and your energy to helping the spread of objective knowledge.

 

[ana]

I would like to 'remind' the following quote from G. regarding breathing practice:

But there is always a
big risk that the moving center will lose its habit of working properly, and since the formatory apparatus cannot work all the time, as for instance during sleep, and the
moving center does not want to, then the machine can find itself in a very sorry situation. A man may even die from breathing having stopped. The disorganization
of the functions of the machine through breathing exercises is almost inevitable when people try to do 'breathing exercises' from books by themselves without proper
instruction. Many people used to come to me in Moscow who had completely disorganized right functioning of their machines by so-called 'yogi breathing' which
they had learned from books. Books which recommend such exercises represent a great danger.
"The transition of breathing from the control of the formatory apparatus into the control of the moving center can never be attained by amateurs. For this transition to
take place the organism must be brought to the last stage of intensity, but a man himself can never do this.

Yes you are right it is a big risk

 

[Rich]

All very enlightening.

Regarding breathing exercise, about 6 years ago I started Ashtanga and then later Bikram yoga. Both were done in a hot room and began with a standing pranayama breathing exercise. The first teacher had started his form of yoga after extensive injuries from a car accident that he said conventional medicine couldn't help him with. He said by practising every day he was able to let his body cure itself. After success he set up his own business. - much of the yoga today is a commercial venture as you're aware. I kept it up until about a year and a half ago and would practice at home. Ironically I would rush the breathing part since I was more focussed on the stretching parts so this thread is a great motivator to get back into this type of exercise with special attention on the breathing part.

Producing a specific video on recommended exercises is a great idea.

 

[Laura]

I did the Pranayama exercise in the bathtub last night for a bit.

The way Craig taught us - and I assume this is the AoL method - was to use what he called Ujjayi Breath. Here's a description of it from Wikipedia:

Ujjayi breathing is a breath technique employed in a variety of Hindu and Taoist Yoga practices. In relation to Hindu Yoga, it is sometimes called "the ocean breath". Unlike some other forms of pranayama, the ujjayi breath is typically done in association with asana practice.

Ujjayi is a diaphragmatic breath, which first fills the lower belly (activating the first and second chakras), rises to the lower rib cage (the third and fourth chakras), and finally moves into the upper chest and throat. The technique is very similar to the three-part Tu-Na breathing found in Taoist Qi Gong practice.

Inhalation and exhalation are both done through the nose. The "ocean sound" is created by moving the glottis as air passes in and out. As the throat passage is narrowed so, too, is the airway, the passage of air through which creates a "rushing" sound. The length and speed of the breath is controlled by the diaphragm, the strengthening of which is, in part, the purpose of ujjayi. The inhalations and exhalations are equal in duration, and are controlled in a manner that causes no distress to the practitioner.

Ujjayi is a balancing and calming breath, which increases oxygenation and builds internal body heat[citation needed]. [This description of ujjayi is that inspired by Sri T. Krishnamacharya, who taught the creators of Ashtanga Yoga, Iyengar Yoga, and many others.]

Ujjayi breathing may be used continuously throughout Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga, and is frequently used in Power Yoga and Vinyasa, or Flow Yoga. This breath enables the practitioner to maintain a rhythm to their practice, take in enough oxygen, and helps build energy to maintain practice, while clearing toxins out of the bodily system. This breath is especially important during transition into and out of asanas (postures), as it helps practitioners to stay present, self-aware, and grounded in the practice, which lends it a meditative quality.

Ujjayi, sometimes referred to as "cobra breathing", is also a helpful way for the yogi or yogini to keep the vital life force, prana, circulating throughout the body rather than escaping from it. Ujjayi is similar to the breathing of a new-born baby before the prana begins to flow out into the world's attractions[citation needed]. [This paragraph explains ujjayi in a manner particular to a certain style of yoga; it is not a universally accepted definition.]

What Craig said was to basically breath with some constriction in the throat like what you get after you take a cold drink on a hot day and say "AHHHhhhhh!" He also described it as sounding a bit like Darth Vader. It's like narrowing the "pipe" that the air goes through so that it makes a sound. Not supposed to be really loud, but distinct.

Breathe in - count 4
Hold - count 4
Breathe out - count 6
Hold - count 2
Breathe in - count 4

and so on.

ADDED:

This page shows the Pranayama - Three Stage Breathing - even though it is erroneously labeled "Sudarshan Kriya".
http://www.tehelka.com/story_main16.asp?filename=Ne030406Sudarshan_CS.asp

Even though the positions are well drawn and explained, the instructions on the page are not exactly what we were taught as you can see from the breathing instructions above. You can do it sitting or standing. In each of the positions you utilize the ujjayi breath technique as described above, and use the counting I've given above. In each position:

Waist - 8 to 12 breaths

Chest - 8 to 12 breaths

Neck/shoulders - 7 to 9 breaths

After each set of ujjayi breaths you rest one minute, breathing normally, to let the Prana be absorbed.

The point of the positions of the hands is to make sure that your breath moves your hands outward while you breathe in. When you are doing the waist position, your hands move out with the action of your diaphragm. When at the chest position, you use the diaphragm breathing and continue it up into the chest to make your hands move out at that level. When you put your elbows up in the air and your hands on the back of your neck, you bring the breath really high up into the top of the lungs.

Don't even try the Bhastrika Pranayam without instruction. It's not as simple as the description on the page suggests.

 

[slowone]

.

Maybe you can give us some insight on the pranayama item, as why do you think is a very powerful tool and how can one benefit, I know you cannot write an experience of 18 years in a few words...but what about some relevant data to take into account...

Yes definitely.

I will give it some serious thought on how to best explain my thoughts/experience. One of the things that comes to mind immediately is that traditionally when I was taught it was always stressed that the Yogis of past times considered Pranayama to be a practice that should only be approached after you had a practice/understanding of Asana. So on the hierarchy of teaching it would be Asana, Pranayama, Meditation. Each one more complex/difficult to master than the previous one. Many Pranayama techniques come with cautions about not being practiced if you are say pregnant or have high blood pressure or emotional issues. I practiced most recently with Rod Stryker who is an American Yoga teacher who recommended a book "Path of Fire and Light " by Swami Rama. Note that it is further listed as Advanced practices of Yoga and is mainly Pranayama although does contain other references to other yogic practices.

I have always felt that Pranayama is a more difficult practice to get an experience of because it is rarely taught (in my opinion) with real depth of understanding. However I don't have that depth of understanding either! SO I am not saying I have and others don't. When I practiced with Rod Stryker we did a lot of Pranayama and I have to tell you that the dreams/nightmares I had and others had after the practice were really overwhelming! Funnily enough for me all about fire and destruction from the sky!! Now I'm beginning to think it was spot on whereas at the time it warned me off because it was overwhelming.But it was pretty full on and I was pregnant at the time.

Ujjayi and Nadi Shodana tend to be the two that I teach most often because they are the two I have been taught most . There are two other books that I would recommend by Richard Rosen. " The Yoga of Breath" and "Pranayama beyond the fundamentals".

I must revisit my understanding of Pranayama and am looking forward to reading how we all get on.I have no knowledge of the Sudarshan Kriya although in my training Kriya is the name giving to a whole range of cleansing practices breathing and otherwise. I look forward to following this thread and building my knowledge through practice along with everyone else.

If and when I remember other insights I have had about Pranayama I will post them. As you said I will need to reflect over many years practice , but I am going to really focus on this .

 

[slowone]

I've just had an Inspiration.
In my last post I mentioned that I had always been taught that Pranayama should be learnt/practiced after you had a good understanding/grasp of the more "basic" practice of yoga being the Asana practice. But it just came to me that maybe the message was lost in translation over many years, being diluted to our modern understanding of Yoga especially in the west.

Maybe just as here we have only realised/are focusing on this now after much work and preparation in other areas of ourselves on this forum. The teaching was actually that you shouldn't practice Pranayama until the necessary preparation had been put in place to know more about your "machine". It would be easy to see how this would be contracted down to have become only after Asana. But that wasn't what was meant. It had/has lost it's place in the fuller context of "The Work" as to when it should be introduced as a beneficial practice.

I hope this post is clear. It just came over me in a wave.As it were!

 

[Mrs. Peel]

This all has one aim: to bring breathing into the right muscles, to hand it over to the moving center. And as I said, sometimes this is successful.
But there is always a big risk that the moving center will lose its habit of working properly, and since the formatory apparatus cannot work all the time, as for instance during sleep, and the moving center does not want to, then the machine can find itself in a very sorry situation. A man may even die from breathing having stopped. The disorganization of the functions of the machine through breathing exercises is almost inevitable when people try to do 'breathing exercises' from books by themselves without proper instruction. Many people used to come to me in Moscow who had completely disorganized right functioning of their machines by so-called 'yogi breathing' which they had learned from books. Books which recommend such exercises represent a great danger.

"The transition of breathing from the control of the formatory apparatus into the control of the moving center can never be attained by amateurs. For this transition to take place the organism must be brought to the last stage of intensity, but a man himself can never do this.

I was reading "Meetings with Remarkable Men" and don't remember the exact quotes or circumstances, but on one of his journeys, Gurdjieff was doing breathing exercises and had met someone along the way who looked like a homeless person but was giving "answers" to questions, and told Gurdjieff that the breathing exercises could be harmful because you were altering your body's natural rhythm of breath. Or something to that effect...

OK, I found it! Kind long...

When the dervish had finished speaking about artificial mastication, and the different means of assimilating food and its automatic transformation in us according to law, I said:

'Be so kind, Father, and also explain to me what you think of what is called artificial breathing. Believing it useful, I practise it according to the instructions of the yogis, namely, after breathing in the air, I hold it a certain time, and then slowly exhale it. Perhaps this also should not be done?'

The dervish, seeing that my attitude towards his words had completely changed, began to be more in sympathy with me and explained the following:

'If you harm yourself with your way of chewing food, you harm yourself a thousand times more by the practice of this breathing. All the exercises in breathing which are given in books and taught in contemporary esoteric schools can do nothing but harm. Breathing, as every sane thinking man should understand, is also a process of feeding, but on another sort of food. Air, just like our ordinary food, entering the body and being digested there, disintegrates into its component parts, which form new combinations with each other as well as with the corresponding elements of certain substances which are already present. In this way those indispensable new substances are produced which are continuously being consumed in the various unceasing life processes in the organism of man.

'You must know that, to obtain any definite new substance, its constituent parts must be combined in exact quantitative proportions.
'Let us take the most simple example. You have to bake bread. For this you must first of all prepare the dough. But to make dough you must take definite proportions of flour and water. If there is too little water, you will get, instead of dough, something that will crumble at the first touch. If you take too much water, you will simply get a mash, such as is used for feeding cattle. It is the same in either case. You will not get the dough necessary for baking bread.

'The same thing occurs in the formation of every substance necessary for the organism. The parts composing these substances must be combined in strict proportions, both qualitatively and quantitatively.

'When you breathe in the ordinary way, you breathe mechanically. The organism, without you, takes from the air the quantity of substances that it needs. The lungs are so constructed that they are accustomed to work with a definite amount of air. But if you increase the amount of air, the composition of what passes through the lungs is changed, and the further inner processes of mixing and balancing must also inevitably be changed.

'Without the knowledge of the fundamental laws of breathing in all particulars, the practice of artificial breathing must inevitably lead, very slowly but none the less surely, to self-destruction.

'You should bear in mind that besides substances necessary for the organism, the air contains others which are unnecessary and even harmful.

'Well then, artificial breathing, that is to say, a forced modification of natural breathing, facilitates the penetration into the organism of these numerous substances in the air which are harmful to life, and at the same time upsets the quantitative and qualitative balance of the useful substances.

'Artificial breathing also disturbs the proportion between the amount of food obtained from the air and the amount obtained from all our other foods. Hence, on increasing or diminishing the intake of air, you must correspondingly increase or diminish the amount of other kinds of food; and to maintain the correct proportion you must have a full understanding of your organism.

'But do you know yourself so well? Do you know, for example, that the stomach needs food not only for nourishment but also because it is accustomed to taking in a certain quantity of food? We eat chiefly to gratify our taste and to obtain the accustomed sensation of pressure which the stomach experiences when it contains this particular quantity of food. In the walls of the stomach there branch out what-are-called wandering nerves which, beginning to function when there is not a certain pressure, give rise to the sensation we call hunger. Thus, we have different hungers: a socalled bodily or physical hunger, and, if it may be so expressed, a nervous or psychic hunger.

'All our organs work mechanically and in each, owing to its nature and habits, there is created a special tempo of functioning, and the tempos of the functioning of different organs are in a definite relation to each other. So there is established in the organism a certain equilibrium: one organ depending on another —all are connected.

'By artificially changing our breathing, we change first of all the tempo of the functioning of our lungs, and, as the activity of the lungs is connected, among other things, with the activity of the stomach, the tempo of the functioning of the stomach is also changed, at first slightly, then more and more. For the digestion of food, the stomach needs a certain time; let us say that food must remain there an hour. But if the tempo of the stomach's functioning is changed, then the time for the passing of food through the stomach is also changed: the food may pass through so quickly that the stomach has only time to do a part of what it has to do. It is the same with the other organs. That is why it is a thousand times better to do nothing with our organism. Better leave it damaged than try to repair it without knowing how.
'I repeat, our organism is a very complicated apparatus. It has many organs with processes of different tempos and with different needs. You must either change everything or nothing. Otherwise, instead of good you might do harm.

'Numerous illnesses arise just from this artificial breathing. In many cases it leads to enlargement of the heart, constriction of the windpipe, or damage to the stomach, liver, kidneys or nerves.
'It very rarely happens that anyone who practises artificial breathing does not harm himself irreparably, and this rare case occurs only if he stops in time. Whoever does it for a long time invariably has deplorable results.

'If you know every small screw, every little pin of your machine, only then can you know what you must do. But if you just know a little and experiment, you risk a great deal, because the machine is very complicated. There are many tiny screws which might easily be broken by a strong shock and which cannot afterwards be bought in any shop.

'Therefore—since you have asked me for it—my advice to you is: stop your breathing exercises.'

The advise above seems to be saying, ...unless you know what you are really doing, stop breathing exercises, and I would have thought Gurdjieff would have known what he was doing.... but maybe not.

I've tried some breathing exercises in the past, but I can't tell where my breath IS. How do you know if it's in the top of the lung, bottom, middle, belly, chest, etc.? It all just seems to be "in there" to me and I can't track it.

 

[Z...]

I've tried some breathing exercises in the past, but I can't tell where my breath IS. How do you know if it's in the top of the lung, bottom, middle, belly, chest, etc.? It all just seems to be "in there" to me and I can't track it.

I think this is mainly about visualization, but if you focus properly you should also be able to feel at least something - I mean as you inhale you feel the air filling top of the lung then middle, bottom etc and in the end you can keep the air in your belly for some moments.

 

[Laura]

What I find a bit strange is that the C's seems to deliberately provide "scary hints" in a subtle way and then they do not follow up on it. Example:

A: A ticket to 5D naturally! They chose the exit at some level. The days will come when the dead seem blessed.

Q: (Discussion of grim answer)

A: For some.

I am all for getting the truth out there no matter what it is. But I can't really understand the point of these subtle hints which will spread fear to "some". For whom is this a valid prediction? Those that do not graduate to 4th density or only those of strong STS polarization? Would have been nice to know:) I mean: If you are happy with your development so far, would it be better to commit suicide to "escape now" instead of living through the coming times? (last one is a joke of course:).

You really have to be familiar with the material as a whole, and the style of the Cs in order to be able to accurately "read" what they mean. Keep in mind that they have a perspective like no other - Primary Reality.

Let me try to explain with a little help from psychologist John Schumaker who wrote a nifty little book entitled "Wings of Illusion" about the human tendency to hide from reality and make up beliefs in saviors and so on.

First, let's establish what reality is. Primary reality is reality as it would present itself if only information and data was available. This is raw data with no critical or analytical thinking. It is reality that is uncorrupted by analysis and thinking. It has not been modified, translated, or otherwise distorted.

Consider the squirrel. With no bias from higher order thinking, the reality of a squirrel is stable. Things are "as they are," so to say. An acorn is always something to eat or to stick in holes. The squirrel doesn't think about why it does that, but later in the winter, it turns out to be handy that all those acorns got stuck in holes.

In the absence of any rational, analytical mechanism to misinterpret acorns, squirrels never have acorn gods and never develop acorn phobias. When another squirrel dies, decomposes and disappears, the remaining squirrels have no ability to alter the empirical data ... the dead squirrel is gone. The reality of the squirrel does not permit a squirrel heaven or happy acorn ground of an afterlife. Because of its brain design, the squirrel is prevented from interpreting empirical data which is its only access to reality.

Human beings, on the other hand, possess something that can automatically banish them from reality. Human beings, in all cultures, construct realities for themselves that are not empirical. Under the influence of pathology, these realities are irrational and false. Socrates frequently began his speeches by imploring his listeners not to be angry with him if he tells them the truth. Socrates definitely knew that falsehoods and errors envelop the human mind.

What is shocking is the astonishing human capacity to tolerate beliefs that make fools of our brains. The surprising fact about human beings is that a belief does not have to be true in order to be believed. Most of the belief systems that generations of humans have lived by and died for are in fact patently false. Yet they were held with deep conviction and fervor. Fads and fallacies, delusions and fantasies, are so numerous in human history that they constitute the very fabric of our existence. Human culture is comprised of castles in the air that are products of our imagination and yearning in the face of a cold, cruel and forbidding reality.

The universality of the distortion of reality is a reaction against pathology. Finding order and meaning in life is a powerful human drive - the drive that can lead us to deep reality, to higher spheres. Reality, after pathology moved in and took it over, became so unpleasant, that this drive for order and meaning was subverted.

At the same time, the human being is quite capable of arriving at reliable knowledge. It is within our capabilities to process incoming information in order that our mental constructions correspond to reality.

Now, let's consider personal reality.

For the squirrel, the personal reality and the primary reality overlap exactly. This is because the squirrel doesn't have the ability to translate and then re-translate incoming information.

To a human being, on the other hand, acorns can be little bombs planted by aliens, or the source of powerful magic, or just an acorn. Many options are open to human beings that are not there for the squirrel. Why do humans avail themselves of these optional interpretations? All things being equal, it is done for purposes of social, psychological and physical survival.

The reality of human beings almost never overlaps completely with primary reality. It is "interpreted" for better or worse. This is true in normal as well as abnormal individuals. These interpretations can be delusional or they can be paths to DEEP reality. DEEP REALITY may, indeed, reveal that acorns are little bombs planted by aliens or the source of powerful magic (not probable, but all possibilities have to be kept open when assessing empirical observations). But one cannot GET TO that deep reality without first being able to face Primary Reality without flinching. One MUST have data and that data must not be skewed.

Human personal reality is FULL of errors when using primary reality, raw data, as the criterion.

The question is: why do humans do this?

The probable answer is that it is a response to emotionally terrifying facets of existence in this world.

The human brain has the ability to:

1) selectively perceive its environment,
2) selectively process information,
3) selectively store memories,
4) selectively disengage from already stored memories, and
5) selectively replace dissociated data with more "user-friendly " data.

These abilities empower human beings to regulate their reality. It's like a thermostat.

So, personal reality is defined by its deviation from primary reality even if it partially overlaps. Personal reality is Empirical reality + or - whatever empirically unjustified modifications have been made.

Ernest Rossi, an Ericksonian hypnotherapist, estimated that at least 80 percent of the information contained in the human mind is false. What makes this estimate remarkable is that Rossi was referring to the vast amount of error that is accumulated not as a result of any kind of hypnosis, but just during the normal waking life of the individual.

Remember, we are not talking about an animal with insufficient brain power to get things right. We are dealing with the creature with the most highly developed cerebral cortex known. Despite our cerebral talents, the mental world of the human being is most often at odds with the true nature of things. Not only that, but we will fight to preserve what is false. We are able to do this while, at the same time, apprehending SOME areas of our reality with astonishing precision!

Whatever the actual extent of our cognitive errors, we need to remember that the generation of these errors is a result of complex cerebral processes that work to safeguard the integrity of the entire nervous system. We aren't doing this "on purpose," so to say.

Next, there is the Cultural Reality. The reality of the individual is, to a great extent, the result of constructions that are fabricated and propagated by culture. Cultural reality is the constellation of externally delivered suggestions that are normalized on the basis of group endorsement.

One central function of any workable culture is to offer mental constructions of reality that are erroneous in relation to empirical reality. Culture is the central bank of cognitive distortion. Ernest Becker described culture as a "macro-lie".

Mental health is assessed by psychologists and psychiatrists as a person's ability to "perceive reality accurately." And, of course, they mean the socially accepted reality! In short, a considerable amount of insanity, in the sense of being out of touch with reality, is requisite to be diagnosed as mentally healthy! (This tells us a lot about the pathological state of psychology and psychiatry.)

Scholars throughout the ages have described empirical reality in terms so noxious that humans must somehow defend themselves from it. The average humans' distaste for the facts of life has been recorded since writing began.

Over the past decades, researchers have tested hypotheses that people do generate transformations or distortions of reality prophylactically. The results of these studies all point to the remarkably consistent tendencies of all human beings to self-deception, illusion and other biases about reality.

In short, it seems that reality is "too strong" for most humans to tolerate.

Several studies dealt with the "illusion of self-control". That is, the illusion that individuals possess environmental or situational control that they do not have in actuality. Several experiments have shown that the illusion of control is inversely related to depression. That is, depressed people are less adept than nondepressed people at generating such illusions. This particular category of illusion appears to insulate people from depression. One can reduce depression by imposing on reality "alterations" that are illusory.

Studies of self-consciousness, or self-insight and self-awareness show that people who rate high in these aspects are less inclined to resort to denial and self-deception. As it turns out, this self-consciousness correlates with negative emotional states. Increasing the apprehension of reality, both internal and external, can precipitate negative emotional responses.

The problem with reality is that it makes no sense. Terror is the normal emotional state for someone in full view and bearing the full psychic brunt of reality.

So, obviously, the ability to create and believe in illusions can make a person more functional.

But, here's the problem. When psychopaths use the human tendency - ability to dissociate to make them believe in illusions that are beneficial to the psychopaths - it always and inevitably is to the detriment of the person engaged in the illusion.

We are unquestionably creatures of genius, but we are engaged in actions, as a society, of such stupidity that our own survival is in jeopardy.

The question is, can we wake up in time?

Can we figure out what really works and the scientific basis of that practice? Can we marry science to mysticism?

That is the perspective of the Cs: PRIMARY REALITY combined with DEEP REALITY.

It takes some getting used to.

 

[Laura]

I've tried some breathing exercises in the past, but I can't tell where my breath IS. How do you know if it's in the top of the lung, bottom, middle, belly, chest, etc.? It all just seems to be "in there" to me and I can't track it.

Then wait for the video. We'll show you how to tell.

 

[Mrs. Peel]

I've tried some breathing exercises in the past, but I can't tell where my breath IS. How do you know if it's in the top of the lung, bottom, middle, belly, chest, etc.? It all just seems to be "in there" to me and I can't track it.

I think this is mainly about visualization, but if you focus properly you should also be able to feel at least something - I mean as you inhale you feel the air filling top of the lung then middle, bottom etc and in the end you can keep the air in your belly for some moments.

Um, no. I feel the air goes in, and my stomach expends. I guess I would have to visualize it.

 

[Laura]

I think this is mainly about visualization, but if you focus properly you should also be able to feel at least something - I mean as you inhale you feel the air filling top of the lung then middle, bottom etc and in the end you can keep the air in your belly for some moments.

No, it is absolutely NOT about "visualization," it is about being trained to breathe in a certain way, utilizing specific muscles in ways that people don't ordinarily use them. When you practice this breathing, the air should go to the lower story first, then the middle story, then the upper story.

 

[slowone]

"It is necessary to understand what this means. We all breathe the same air. Apart from the elements known to our science the air contains a great number of substances unknown to science, indefinable for it and inaccessible to its observation. But exact analysis is possible both of the air inhaled and of the air exhaled. This exact analysis shows that although the air inhaled by different people is exactly the same, the air exhaled is quite different.

Let us suppose that the air we breathe is composed of twenty different elements unknown to our science. A certain number of these elements are absorbed by every man when he breathes. Let us suppose that five of these elements are always absorbed. Consequently the air exhaled by every man is composed of fifteen elements; five of them have gone to feeding the organism. But some people exhale not fifteen but only ten elements, that is to say, they absorb five elements more. These five elements are higher 'hydrogens.' These higher 'hydrogens' are present in every small particle of air 'we inhale. By inhaling air we introduce these higher 'hydrogens' into ourselves, but if our organism does not know how to extract them out of the particles of air, and retain them, they are exhaled back into the air. If the organism is able to extract and retain them, they remain in it. In this way we all breathe the same air but we extract different substances from it. Some extract more, others less.

"In order to extract more, it is necessary to have in our organism a certain quantity of corresponding fine substances. Then the fine substances contained in the organism act like a magnet on the fine substances contained in the inhaled air. We come again to the old alchemical law: 'In order to make gold, it is first of all necessary to have a certain quantity of real gold.' 'If no gold whatever is possessed, there is no means whatever of making it.'

"The whole of alchemy is nothing but an allegorical description of the human factory and its work of transforming base metals (coarse substances) into precious ones (fine substances).

[…]

I thought this was interesting. From "The path of fire and light" Swami Rama. Prana is defined as breath also as energy. The word Prana itself comes from the Sanskrit Pra - meaning "first", and Na "the smallest unit of energy". Prana meaning the first breath or the most basic unit of energy.

 

[RedFox]

Talk about getting to the heart of the matter...that was a fantastic explanation Laura

A: A ticket to 5D naturally! They chose the exit at some level. The days will come when the dead seem blessed.

Q: (Discussion of grim answer)

A: For some.

Studies of self-consciousness, or self-insight and self-awareness show that people who rate high in these aspects are less inclined to resort to denial and self-deception. As it turns out, this self-consciousness correlates with negative emotional states. Increasing the apprehension of reality, both internal and external, can precipitate negative emotional responses.

The problem with reality is that it makes no sense. Terror is the normal emotional state for someone in full view and bearing the full psychic brunt of reality.

So if I understand this correctly, it seems the C's are suggesting the the terror of the situation will break through peoples illusions, but as they have no context to process it they will more than likely end up seeing 'the dead as blessed' by comparison (for they can rest in peace).

The whole 'terror of the situation' seems a whole lot less scary to me now (this is where having not got round to G's works yet may be showing).....if terror is the normal emotional state of some in full view of reality, then I look forward to the day when I stand unblinking in the terror of it all (no matter what I can see)!

I feel like somebody just hit the juice on the learning curve accelerator!

 

[theos]

I've read some books and attempted to practice breathing and meditation on my own but I never progressed because I didn't fully grok -- first time using that word-- their meaning and purpose. I never could tell if I was doing it properly.

I'm looking forward to seeing the video on these breathing exercises. Thanks for sharing.