Valentines Day Meditation & Energy Dynamics
This articles explores:
- Valentine’s day meditation techniques
- Tantra and the brain
- Energy dynamics
- Safe boundries
In a previous post this week I explored 1 of Tantra’s 112 meditation techniques. In this article, another technique will be explored.
Last weeks technique involved “looking at an object lovingly”, and I explained how this simple tool of awareness can shift your perspective and change the brain.
This week, the technique is as follows:
“Look at an object as a whole”
Or
“Look upon a bowl without seeing the sides or the material. In a few moments become aware.”
As always, the technique is simple and can be practiced in formal meditation or as you move through the world.
First, some finer details.
Sit with eyes open and stare at a meditation object. A good placement for the object is a few feet infront of you, and slightly below the head so the eyes gently gaze downward.
See the object as a whole. Do not discriminate details of colour, texture, meaning, etc.
See it without borders in relationship to the background.
In a sense, dissolve the boundries between parts and see everything as one.
If you move deeply into this meditation it is beautiful. The world may appear to be one seemless painting.
There are many who have had this experience on plant medicines or mind altering substances…where the borders between objects began to ooze away and everything began to be seen as one.
If you have been following my posts I speak to this most times I talk about Tantra, Tantra is a technology that takes an experiences such as sex, laughter, and even what happens on a psychedelic experience and finds the mechanism and develops practices that relate to creating that same experience through conscious meditation. No external substance needed.
Yes, it will take more effort at first, but the changes become permanent.
What changes can be spoken to?
When we are viewing the world and discriminating objects and their parts, we are utilizing left brain dominant perception. Because our culture and its workings have become largely left brain dominant, many people have been conditioned to permanently see the world in this way. We are overly focused on linear tasks, numbers, order, rational thought…etc, over the right brain’s holistic vision, art, dance, and non-linear process. This creates neuroplastic changes to the brain and change its ‘default mode’ to be left brain dominant.
One of the reasons why the Western culture loves marijuana and psychedelics is that they create whole brain thinking and/or more activity on the right side. For an individual who has lived most their existence in the left brain, it is a vacation to connect back to the right…where body sensation comes into greater awareness, and the brain synthesizes information and thus creates insights from the data collected in one’s life and memory, and increases creative thinking, and creates an openness to experience the unknown.
But, using a substance, though it will form new neural pathways that better connect both brain hemispheres, won’t cause permanent neuroplastic changes to the default processing mode of the brain unless there is repeated use (except under extreme conditions). One will essentially have to choose that way of perceiving more and more, till it becomes ingrained.
Thus, external substances may help and they often contain components that boost brain-derived neurotrophic factor, which helps to stimulate new neurons. So that offers some benifit to the process. If one needs to repeat the act over and over again to form the new neural pathways, but the act is tied to an external substance, this can easily create dependence…and state driven functionality…meaning, in order to create that state of mind, one relies on the external condition, and this is also associated with state dependant skills and memory..wherein one can only remember and perform certain skills under the state they encoded them under.. for example, if you always smoke weed and play guitar or do yoga, you may condition your mind to only access that talent through the specific ritual…and if you were to quite the marijauna, your capacity to perform would alter.
Tantra offers another tool.
Tantra offers a way of perceiving that will guide the neural restructuring to create more wholeness in your perception. The process may be slower, but it will be earned with discipline and many other factors which offer additonal benifits.
I am not here to judge either pathway, or the combination of both, but it is good to mention and briefly explore some of the finer details, because both pathways will have positive and negatives and an individual is best to choose based on their individual circumstance and goals. There are many postive and negatives not mentioned here and there are ways to navigate right relationship, there has not been a complete analysis in this article.
Getting back to the meditation….
Conciously choosing to view an object as a whole, instead of in peices can be challenging. As mentioned, we are moving beyond the default processing in the brain, the difficulty on a physiologic level is quite literally your brain structuring new neural pathways between brain hemispheres which were not there before….your brain is literally growing like a tree with branches coming out. This is why meditation takes work at first and can be exhausting. After the neural pathways are formed, it is much less work, because the physiologic restructuring has happened, and then a simple choice is all this is needed to send an electrical impulse through that specific neural pathway.
So what does this all have to do with Valentines day?
Our capacity to love is very much related to how we percieve. If we take this meditation with the previous one we get this…
‘Look lovingly at an object’
‘See an object without parts’
***object can also refer to persons depending on how you choose to meditate.
Whether one uses an object or person for the meditation, what is important is the perciever…it is the perciever that changes. They become loving. They see the world as whole. This seeing can then be offered to your lover or friends.
When we choose to see another, it is often default for us to see them in parts… we judge their face, their clothes, their weight…etc. Some of these are conscious, other are subconscious (neural patterns that are conditioned in the system). Thus, the meditation is to rewrite patterning, we choose to be loving, and choose to see the world as one, instead of by its differences. We need not abandon discrimination, but the practice of balancing the brain, and unifying both polarities of duality are important to gain a clear way of perceiving.
That is the whole aim of meditation. To unify duality, to unify the two brain hemispheres, to find true seeing that can view the multiple dimensions of perceiving and call it into one vision. When the meditation is learned and successful, not only will the borders of the object be dissolved, you the perciever, and your relationship to the object will dissolve. This dissolution is best facilitated by the force of love.
To practice this meditation with your beloved, sit a few feet apart and see each other lovingly. For a few moments, consciously choose to discriminate parts of the other person, and then see them as a whole. If your sensitive to it, you will feel when they are judging vs. Seeing and loving you as a whole.
When the difference has been felt, and it can be important to feel the polarity to dive into one aspect deeper, then sit for 5-10 minutes seeing their whole being… perhaps gazing into the eyes and breathing together.
Most will find that they begin to hallucinate slightly, that the borders between things will merge, and their perception changes. This is your brain switching to right hemispheric dominance or balancing the two brain hemispheres.
It is important to do this exercise with love and I recommend doing it with someone you trust. When we move into eye gazing and looking lovingly, it can dearmour our heart and vulnerability will shine. If it is held, it can be safely experienced. If it is not held properly, it can cause a person to recoil.
Further, to eye gaze in love will create changes in the neurohormones, such as oxytocin, which relates to feeling of trust for another person. This is beautiful when its between you and your partner.
Manipulators, unsavy gurus, and sales people will use this same tactic, they will see you as your whole, and they will love you, and if you respond that vulnerable bridge will be crossed… the guise of love can then be used to sell you things, or to take advantage of you. They are essentially dearmouring you, then when your open, they work their own purposes.
This is why understanding the process is important, and why a balanced brain is key. If we are all right brain dominance, we are put ourselves out there as holistic and loving, and individuals can see that ‘bambi’ innocent nature and will prey on it.
Balanced brain functionality comes when we can see beyond duality, which means we have the availability to feel and percive without borders and with love… and yet, we still discriminate and keep a grounding and safe boundry.
By learning this meditation you learn to actively an d
consciously switch between the two modes of processing.
I could get into a whole things about how psuedo-shaman and other individuals utilize plant medicines to similarly dearmour people. And it’s not always conscious, some are conscious manipulators, others are just acting out unconsciousness.
Either way, its important to navigate.
So yes, in my discussion on love and meditation, we ended up exploring manipulation…and this is important ground.
Because safe love, means safe boundries.
Another dimension of this meditation is to set it up as I described with two individuals looking at each other, with love, eye gaze, seeing each others wholeness.
Then to play with awareness. Awareness is a non-discrimatory field. You are awareness. Your awareness can be in the body, or in a field of awareness around the body, intermingling with another person’s field, or even placed on or in another person.
An invitation to explore what it is like to consciously meet your partner in the middle, or to merge energy fields with your awareness. An important one is to be within your own awareness and energy, and one of the best ways to do this is to be fully conscious of your full breath (pelvis floor to crown) and then to extend your awareness out to meet your partner from your CENTER.
‘KEY: LOVE from your center’
Energetically, some people un-center themselves in relationship by merging through love, while losing their center and their capacity to self regulate and deeply tune into their needs. This is where co-dependancy arises and imbalance.
By maintaining awareness in your breath and body, then expanding your awareness and love like a field that connects you both, is a way to offer love from a place of wholeness within ourselves. One of the best ways to do this is to synch your heart’s electromagnetic field by tuning into your heart, and the hearts of your partner in one expanded awareness (literally transcending the self through love)..when coherence happens, the breaths will typically synch and you’ll feel it…energy and information will flow more effortlessly between you and your partner because your connected… all kinds of psychic non-verbal communication can take place.
You’ve probably achieved this synchronization many times.. and been in and out of it.. by being awareness of it as a conscious process allows you to synch back up when you become distance.
This safe way of relating allows for a safe boundary… it allows an individual to disconnect for a period and be in their own energy, which may be needed if they are processing something personal. Their partner can then energetically hold the space, by regulating their own emotions, allowing safe distance, and not interfering and keeping their field of love and awareness around an individual, with a safe boundry. If a partnership is always merged in their energy, the partner may feel rejected when one needs to disconnect. But, it’s not about them. A successful relationship understands these energy dynamics and boundries needed and consciously knows how to connect, when to disconnect, and can deeply tune into their own field to regulate, and anothers field. When we learn to do this in a loving partnership, it offers us a way of doing it for all people…whether those we meet on the street or our clients…this is what it means to hold space, it comes down to subtle energy dynamics and its always a deep listening and communication between two or more individuals.
I could go on about the polarities in the field and how these play out during love making and healing, but this article is getting long… leave a comment if you want me to explore further
Wishing you love and unity in your perception this valentine’s day.
Whether you have a partner or not… love is your body and being. Unconditonal love and compassion are available, for self and other. Agape love, or love for the self is available. Eros love, or outward action love is available. Love is within, sometimes we just need to meditate to find it within ourselves and tear down the walls we have built from past vulnerabilities. When we learn to manage our energy and boundries we need not fear to love, then we will love fully, not as we did when we were an innocent young one, but as a conscious and grown human, capable of loving one on a much deeper dimension of energy and intention.
Please share if you found this article beneficial.
Blessings
I also have many other practices and tools for partners and how to balance both brain hemispheres
With love,
Aya -ZK
For information on 1-on-1 sessions and coaching, and all my links to YouTube, podcasts, website, etc.
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