So then, as I said, the ‘pore breathing in ones intention’ is introduced (actually earlier in the middle of the sense training). It’s similar, in essence, to pore breathing in the elemental energy to antidote repeating unhealed aspects of the mind. But now, rather than being surrounded by an elemental energy, you can be ‘surrounded by your desire/intention’. So, say you want to create ‘financial abundance’, then how do you do this? Already, by now, you can hold an ‘idea’ for an extended period, an idea in the ghostly-dark-matter, a vagueness of ‘something’. Initially it only exists for a fleeting moment in-between a series of mental pictures that inspire it, but over time, the mental pictures are less and less and the ghostly-dark-matter idea is more and more.
Breathing in your intention through all pores is the same. To start with you might need to use a lot of mental pictures to get this going, seeing yourself surrounded by a colour. An infinite light radiating out into space in all directions, green is a good choice for financial abundance, and perhaps images of abundance. Whatever is on your vision board if you have one, if not, then what abundance means to you, new property, gold bars, jewelry, whatever, and these pictures flash through the mental screen which is either close to or permeates the body. The green light fills the entire surrounding universe (replacing any awareness of the physical universe). As you go forward, what you are looking for is that essence, that ghostly-dark-matter, a knowing that I AM abundant, the idea, the fact of something, not the mental pictures of visualised light, they drop away as you can be surrounded by just the idea, which you breathe in through every pore with every in-breath and it accumulates in your body.
The next instruction is to impregnate water with the energy of your intention (and drink it). Also, when washing, to imagine the water washing away your negative qualities, any impediments to your intentions manifesting. If you are working on the unhealed mental pictures from the earlier practice, then you could imagine these pictures leaving with the water. The impregnation of water is, to my mind, an extension of (my) toilet practice, of resetting the mood on numerous occasions in the day, with the water practice, you are also (briefly) recalling what your intentions are. It’s all well and good raising energy but you need to actually have your intentions clear so that it is actually directed towards some goal. The showering exercise is again reinforcing the habit of double-vision, of always living in two worlds, and orientating yourself, your feelings and reactions, from the unseen world rather than the seen (a key of magickal attainment and happiness).
Next the text returns to the black and white soul mirror, i.e. the results of your mental stock-taking. The instruction is to look at the black part, all of the negative repeating thoughts, emotions and qualities, and to develop the opposite. It sounds a little trite, just ‘become a better person’ and that is the end of it, but it’s actually a very specific instruction that becomes apparent if there has been some success in the training so far. By now, one can let go of unwanted thoughts instantly and maintain concentration, i.e. choose a thought and hold it. It’s now possible to have a single abstract idea held constantly in consciousness for a full five minutes. It’s possible to hold a specific mental picture or any other chosen spiritual sense, exclusively in consciousness for five minutes. I think there was some study, I don’t recall where, but the threshold for changing the stream of consciousness is 90 seconds maximum. I.e. if there is a train of thought or emotion in the mind and you can switch focus for longer a maximum of 90 seconds, it doesn’t return. I think you know what I mean. If your in a bad mood and that negative emotion is a sensation in the body and it is radiating thoughts and bad mental pictures and you just decide to shake it off and think about something else for ten seconds, it works. Yet as soon as you relax that mental focus, the bad mood immediately reignites, and the negative daydreams and inner-dialogue returns. It’s like the emotion, the sensation — or shall we correctly say that the energy that is existing in the energetic body — is still there … holding it’s form, smoldering in the same way. It’s like a fire that can produce its own fuel and keep on feeding itself and ten seconds of not fueling it just isn’t going to cut it because it has enough fuel stored to keep going.
However, it cannot go on for ever, if the contrary thought, emotion or energy is held long enough, it does burn out. It resets. People do this all the time naturally, you’ve been doing it all your life in one form or another. You must have been or you wouldn’t have survived. For example, think of someone in a bad mood about something, just having a bad day, fuming about whatever. They go to a movie. Then get engrossed in the plot, watching the characters, and they think about what is happening.
Now something else has occupied consciousness and the mood is reset, or somewhat lessened. Now, that’s a two hour movie, and of course, without training, there’s no guarantee that will work at resetting the mood, a bad mood or negative train of thought can always be resparked or triggered by something in the world, or just keep raising by itself if it is strong enough.
What has been taught with the training so far is a pure form of how this process works. When someone goes to see a movie to ‘get their mind off’ something, what they are talking about (without knowing it) is a very watered down version of mental discipline, i.e. replacing spontaneous or triggered thoughts, feelings and stream of consciousness — with chosen thoughts, feelings and stream of consciousness (and so focus also).
Therefore, what would be a trite, abstract instruction of just ‘don’t have any issues anymore’, or ‘just be positive’ becomes an actual practice. The practice is to choose every thought and feeling that you ever have from now on. This is mastery. It’s mastery of self. This is what it’s all about, the ultimate goal. Now, it becomes actually doable. There’s a threshold to pass where you realise this on a very deep level. There is a series of pictures from the Zen tradition called the Ox Herding Pictures, which show the stages of a … I don’t know, farmer or something, and he is taming a wild bull (representing the mind) and it shows the journey in doing this, from ignorance (undisipline) to full awakening (discipline).
So now you have the tools to switch consciousness to the positive at any time, to remove any negativity in the present moment, to just drop the negative thoughts, feelings, mental pictures and vow to never (knowingly) tolerate them again. I used to do stand up comedy and we had a semi-famous comedian come on tour for a while once and he gave us a free workshop for helping him. He told us one of his techniques. At the start of his act he stands up on the stage, looks at the audience, and he simply tells them, confidently, that he’s really funny, he’s written a great act and they’re all going to laugh a lot and have a great time and that is the end of it. When he does that, it gets a laugh in itself, but then the audience seems to comply.
Simply decide now that you will be a positive, successful, enlightened person no matter how many times you have to reign your thoughts, you will never stop; then don’t.
Next, the text returns to pore breathing, but not with the counterbalancing of elements as previously, but to breathe in your intentions, and to breathe out doubt. So there is certainly some sense to the ordering here, in that the holding of a pure idea came before this. There is some previous practice of working with the ghostly-dark-matter vague nothingness of an idea. If this could be comprehended at all, or perhaps ‘sensed’ is a better description, then in a way it has a characteristic with a mental picture. When you visualise something, then it exists on a ‘mental screen’ somewhere, or it’s kind of created from a ghostly material and it often locates around the eyes, in relation to the physical body I mean. That is because vision is (usually) the strongest of the senses, and because there is a stronger sense of our ‘existence’, or our sense of consciousness being located there.
Now perhaps you don’t visualise well, or at all, but your sense of touch is stronger. There should now be some experience and success in dealing with ‘spiritual touch’, imagining touching something, and when you recreate these sensations in the mind, where do they exist, in relation to your consciousness? When I do this, it’s kind of in another realm, but it also kind of exists, insanely, around my stomach area (in relation to my physical body). No idea how it is for you, we’re all different, but my point is, when we recreate these inner-sense experiences, then they seem to locate someplace around the physical body, kind of, and kind of in another realm permeating this one.
That location is really by habit. We are embodied in the physical body, and there is a corresponding energetic body that permeates it, but it’s fluid in a way that the physical body is not. When I create a mental picture in this ‘other realm’ it also kind of exists around my physical eyes somewhere, but that is only because of habit. If I want it to be created around my foot, then it’s effortless to make that the case. It doesn’t even have to be around my body. I can visualise a red rose, and spontaneously it tends to be created somewhere around my eyes, but it can also be around my foot, or just as easily, over the road on the opposite street, or 1000 meters up floating in the sky.
So the ghostly-dark-matter primordial idea energy, tends to be existing around the eyes (for me, YMMV), but again, it is a free energy of a free consciousness existing in a place by habit. It can really be existing anywhere. It can be in your foot, or over the road on the opposite street.
Therefore, you can consider your intention, say financial abundance, in-between a succession of chosen images of abundance is the ghostly-dark-matter of knowing I AM A MAGNET TO ABUNDANCE, the inner certainty, the substance of the thing unseen, and you can choose to locate this all around you. With each in-breath you can choose to draw this into you as though you are a sponge, and with each in-breath it accumulates and grows stronger and stronger.
Conversely, you can consider all of the doubts and contrary thoughts and look at the ghostly-dark-matter of pure doubt in-between the mental pictures and choose to locate this within your body, and see the sponge of your body breathing it out and dispelling it with each out-breath.
So what we are practicing here is an advanced, pure form of thought replacement. But more than that, you are holding the pure form of the… I AMNESS self-concept for an extended period, perhaps a five minute breathing meditation. So say, as I explained earlier, you do a five minute session of creative visualisation, lots of mental pictures of abundance, and the occasional ‘naturalness’ of belief, of actually BEING abundant, a knowing I AM ABUNDANT arising in-between the mental pictures occasionally, and hopefully more and more and as it grows with repeated practice, then it can start to replace some of the contrary I AM ghostly-dark-matter I AM knowings spontaneously being created throughout the day.