The next instruction is to fall asleep affirming with a set of beads. It’s true that the last thoughts in consciousness carry over into sleep, it’s a powerful way to carry an intention into the … unconscious (light).You can see it for yourself with practice, but moods tend to carry over from falling asleep to waking up. Yes, it can be the case that sometimes you’ll fall asleep worrying about a problem and wake up with the solution, but generally, the emotion you are holding when you lose consciousness at night will be the one you awake with. Entering sleep and waking up is a doorway, or a bridge, between waking and sleeping, yes, but also between self-power and other power. Your thoughts and feelings are created ‘in the light’ and then held there as intentions, and your have self-power has most influence when it stands at the bridge between realms.
The issue with the beads method is that it’s hard. If you can make it work, then do it, stick with it every night. Personally, the only way I can use this is to ‘reset’ my mood. In bed (on the floor actually, I don’t use beds), I affirm with belief until there is an underlying excitement (at what I am saying (my aspiration) being the truth), then I daydream a bit and fall asleep. This isn’t as good as falling asleep affirming, but that causes insomnia for me and I can’t do it.
However, I think I make up for it with the other half of the practice I invented, which is to wake up affirming. It’s not just the last thought and feeling before losing consciousness which is important, it is also the first when you are awakening, as you are then standing on the same bridge between realms. I wake and try and become aware of a positive mood first and make my first thought the affirmation/stated intention. If something has gone wrong and I wake up in any kind of negativity, then I lie there on the floor and don’t rise until I’ve flipped the mood. They say, never let the sun go down on an argument, which is good as you’ll lose consciousness holding resentment, which will solidify any bad feeling. But I would say, DON’T FALL ASLEEP TO A BAD MOOD, AND DON’T RISE WITHOUT A GOOD ONE.
In the notes I’m writing from, it also mentions toilet breaks. I can’t remember if that’s my addition or if it’s in the book. I don’t think, in the book, it tells you to sit and chant every time you are on the toilet. But as you progress with the training, your concentration strengthens. Most people don’t realise it, but concentration is actually a ‘letting go’ muscle. Something comes up in the mind and rather than fuel a thought and let it turn into a chain, you allow it to burn out, often before it even fully ignites. Sometimes a thought can be so appealing. I’ve been meditating and a thought comes up, a lovely daydream, a mental picture of me being a smartass, having an argument with someone and being right, Oh, such a lovely dream and I so much want to daydream it, and I freeze it on the first frame, and it is NO easy task to LET IT GO and return to my chosen focus.
So here Bardon’s main instruction is to fall asleep affirming (if you can). My instruction is to use the letting go muscle to fall asleep in a high mood of positive expectancy (if you cannot affirm yourself to sleep, although the mood should be the same even if you can). So the letting go muscle can reset mood falling asleep and waking, but also any time. Toilet breaks are useful because it’s something that we all do on a regular basis throughout the day. So the little practice of NOT RISING UNTIL GOOD MOOD IS RISEN, can refer to your bed (or yoga mat on the floor in my case) and toilet seat (or squat if you are in Asia). Consciousness is a stream When it is reset to the positive and held for a minute, it tends to continue flowing that course until reset (triggered) by something in the world. By resetting on waking and bathroom breaks you are changing enough of the stream for there to be a noticeable effect in life, in terms of luck and things ‘going your way’; but make sure to reset to high, positive expectation — rather than just ‘lessening the greyness’!
Returning to the book. The next instruction is to look at an object, and recreate it in the mind, and hold it steady (mentally) for between ten and twenty minutes. So this is going to strengthen the spiritual sense of seeing. Again, it will take letting go and concentration to be able to do this. This is the basic instruction, and it’s a little abstract. I see no reason why you cannot make this more practical. Already you can hold a single idea. Now, if rather than some random object, you could choose a representation of your awakening, then it would essentially be Nembutsu. You look at an image of the Buddha (or whatever represents awakening to you), while holding the idea of your own awakening and feeling a high emotion of expectation. But you could also choose, say, and image of affluence, (gold bars, luxury or whatever) and hold it with the idea of attracting wealth while feeling high mood.
I would do this eyes open, if it works for you. You look at the picture (or object) while you are simultaneously visualising it, so your inner and outer eyes, the physical and the spiritual eyes are simultaneously seeing the same thing. So you are seeing one thing on two levels. Your physical eyes are perceiving the picture/object, lets say an apple, the light is falling on your retina and an electrical signal is sent to the brain, which recreates the image of the apple, while at the same time you are holding a mental picture of an apple. This opens what the poet Blake refers to as ‘double vision’. He talks about living life in double vision. While he went around living life and perceiving the world, he was always aware of the mental world. So for example, looking at a sunset, he might decide it was a representation of his radiant health and see the rays as golden light entering his spine and imbuing him with energy. Everything he perceived had a spiritual component on the mental plane. To have this skill of double vision is a large part of mastering life, as we ultimately need to orientate all of our moods and feelings from the inner-world, where we have complete volition, we base our emotions in a world where we are Gods.
This practice combines well with a vision board if you use one. You can have pictures of your goals and practice holding them with high mood. Bardon’s actual instruction is to start with one object and have the eyes closed (after you’ve observed it to memorise it), then practice with the eyes open.
Next, to isolate an object, remove it from the setting and just see it on a plain background.
So this is strengthening spiritual seeing, and the next series of exercise strengthen the other spiritual senses.
Learn to hear a ticking clock (where there is none) for five minutes.
Do the same for the sound of bells, then the wind. These auditory exercises should be exclusive, i.e. you ONLY hear the sounds, and do not focus on any other sense, sensation or mental picture.
Then feel hungry for five minutes.
Then feel thirsty for five minutes.
Something I would add here, also learn to recreate the feeling of being full, wholly satiated, like when you’ve just had a huge meal.
Also, can you use the latter to switch the physical feeling when you are ACTUALLY hungry, but it’s not convenient to eat?
So the next instruction is to practice breathing in and out all of your desires, which jumps back to an earlier instruction, and then it’s back to the training the various senses. Now to me, that makes no sense. Why not present all the sense exercises together, then the pore breathing (which would actually work better once the senses are strengthened).
Possibly the thinking was that, if this is practiced sequentially, then it would all take a long time. Firstly, to be able to hold a single mental image for half an hour could take months, and then a week for each of the senses, so it might have been the idea to break it up with a variation in the middle, as Bardon is repeatedly stating throughout the book to master one exercise, up to the prescribed time required, before moving on to the next. So the ‘jumbling up’ of abstract spiritual sense training with pragmatic pore breathing was intentional, in terms of keeping up someone’s motivation.
But I think you can include magickal intent from the start. For example, learning to hold a visual image for thirty minutes, as an abstraction, is the kind of thing they would teach you in formal monastic training. But why not make that image a goal, a manifesting intention, with the simultaneous holding of an idea and the holding of a high mood as a kind of ‘manifestation meditation’? This not only increases motivation to train in the first place, but also the high mood itself guides concentration. The idea of having manifested a cherished goal raises an enduring mood that focuses the mind; it’s a positive, self-reinforcing cycle.
So I’ll present it the way that makes sense to me. To continue the sense training exercises:
Imagine the smell of a single scent, until you can smell it for five minutes unbroken (without physical aid, obviously). I like doing this with orange. My own idea is to choose an aromatherapy scent that has the effect you want. Orange is ruled by the sun and can cause optimism, so I go for that!
Imagine a taste, one taste, exclusively, for five minutes.
Next, there is the combination of two senses.
Practice seeing and hearing something for five minutes, say a chirping bird.
Then try touching and hearing, stroking a cat by a waterfall, but keep the visual field black, DO NOT see the cat or waterfall.
Then do three senses at the same time. E.g. tasting a pizza, smelling it and feeling the hot base of it you are holding (but not seeing it, keep the visual field black). Or stroking a cat, hearing it miaw and smelling Jasmine, but keep the visual field black. Biting an apple, the taste of pizza while seeing a sunrise. Be creative and experiment. This is NOT easy.
All of the above was to be performed with the eyes closed. Next it is cycled through again but with the eyes open, which increases the strength (and ability) of double vision.
Next, it’s cycled through again but with scenes that have a lot of movement, so for example, replace the single chirping bird with an aviary of chirping birds with you in the middle of it, etc.
Lastly, cycle through again, but include people in the scene.