Meditation’s Darkest Secret. Enlightenment Made Easy
By: Lyam Thomas Christopher
Tags: Spirituality, Enlightenment, Magick, Tantra, Meditation

Somehow, I managed to fight off this attack of…whatever it was. I lurched upright, gasping, and pulled myself to the edge of the bed, numb, clumsy, and heavy, trying to steady myself. The tingling was rapidly subsiding as though some great power was leaving me and diminishing into the distance. As though some giant beast had just slithered over my body and was now proceeding on its way. What the hell?

You may have experienced something similar, or at least heard about this kind of frightening nighttime phenomenon from others. There are various interpretations of what it means. Some explanations are modernistic, such as a diagnosis of sleep paralysis. Other interpretations are religious, as in descriptions of demonic possession or of an evil spirit that visits you in the night. A succubus or an incubus. An eastern yogi might describe the experience as a “kundalini awakening.”

Take a look at the following story about a similar nighttime attack experienced by the famous spiritual teacher Eckhart Tolle. Note its similarity to my own attack — as well as its similarity to the fantastical effects described in the tale of Faust’s ritual at the crossroads:

…I felt drawn into what seemed like a vortex of energy. It was a slow movement, at first, and then it accelerated. I was gripped by an intense fear, and my body started to shake. I heard the words “Resist nothing,” as if spoken inside my chest. I could feel myself being sucked into a void. It felt as if the void was inside of myself rather than outside. Suddenly, there was no more fear, and I let myself fall into that void. I have no recollection of what happened after that.

After this harrowing experience, Tolle woke up different. He claims to have become spiritually enlightened. Indeed, if you watch him speak today, his presence is powerful. His gaze is never absent, and he never appears lost in troubling or personal thoughts. He appears somehow completely open, clear, and unassuming, even radiant. Tolle is, perhaps, a living example of Buddhahood. A rare kind of individual who has become completely and permanently liberated from suffering. It would appear that such a thing is actually possible.

As you may have noted, I fought off my nighttime attack and returned to normal ego consciousness. Tolle, on the other hand, was able to surrender to it, to let himself go completely. His ego utterly dissolved into the void, and when he woke he was no longer a little suffering self but a living embodiment of universal intelligence. He had permanently changed.

And now here’s the really good news. If you are brave enough to face this nighttime oblivion monster, there are methods for coaxing it out to come and get you. It will be a test, of course, but if you are able to let go and disappear into the void, you too can die and be reborn. And achieve permanent liberation from suffering.

“If you die before you die, then you will not die when you die.”

— inscription over the gate of a monastery on Mt. Athos

I am well aware of how crazy the above proposition sounds, but you must remember that this is Forbidden Realms, and this is the kind of stuff we explore here. And this secret of the nighttime oblivion monster is something that most authentic spiritual teachers will not share with you right away. They will try to protect you from it — because they know that you, very likely, are not yet ready.

Merlin, Arthur, and the Dragon

The “Letting Go” Attack

I call this kind of nighttime disturbance the “letting go attack.” It gets provoked by daily spiritual discipline, like ritual and meditation. After my first experience of it, I had numerous others. While soaking in a hot bath, relaxing, I might get overcome by that roaring sound again and a sense of paralysis—and then jerk awake for fear of passing out and drowning in two feet of water. Or on some nights, drifting off to sleep, I would suddenly feel the prickling energy rising up my body, and the fear would kick in and “save me” once again.

When these “letting go” attacks come, there can be an incredible sense of denial in the face of what’s happening. The energy rising up and consuming you feels like an alien force. But it’s not an alien force. It’s what you actually are, even though the ego will not accept the truth: “Oh no, I am not that. I can’t possibly be…that!”

My Hermetic teacher at that time refrained from commenting extensively on these attacks. She calmly reassured me with “It’s okay. Just let yourself go. Discover something new.” And then said nothing more about it. She was aware, of course, that these experiences were the natural result of an intensive daily regimen of Kabbalistic study, ritual, and meditation.

As anyone who reads Forbidden Realms already knows, secret traditions such as Tantra and Kabbalah claim to offer physical, magical, and meditative techniques that make enlightenment achievable in a single lifetime. These techniques are often secret because they are “hardcore.” That is, they don’t beat around the bush. They go straight into the heart of our spiritual ignorance and wipe it out. The meditative methods of Tantra bypass our intellectual defenses and open the hidden valves of deep experience, awakening all the senses, including our neglected inner, imaginal senses. When those secret valves open, we are flooded, overwhelmed, wiped out. We are no longer a separate, desolate self with its fantasies about being kicked around by life. All of that nonsense collapses away. It’s like dying, except you get to come back just moments later. You reincarnate immediately, in the same body.

And now for the deepest secret of all. The goal of Tantric techniques isn’t really all that sophisticated. Quite simply, these techniques are designed to induce the “letting go” attack. And that’s all. They simply summon up the oblivion monster and give you a shot at permanent awakening. Everything else in mysticism is just window dressing. How much simpler could enlightenment be?

“…it is the abyss which becomes visible in the gaps of existence. Some Kabbalists who have developed this idea…maintain that in every transformation of reality, in every change of form, or every time the status of a thing is altered, the abyss of nothingness is crossed and for a fleeting mystical moment becomes visible.”

— Gershom Scholem

When the Ego Collapses

How does this work? In a previous article, I mentioned that demons are actually personifications of trauma. And in an article before that, I disclosed that many forms of trauma are not personal but evolutionary. That is, we inherit them in our cellular memory, from our human and pre-human ancestors — possibly even from as far back as single-celled organisms.

Most of the karma that troubles you comes from eons of “past lives.” Previous generations. Previous stages of evolution. Primordial memories that go all the way back to the dawn of biological life. These memories are very much alive in us right now. They sometimes arise in a personified form, as demons, thanks to how our nervous system works. They might arise as growling voices, or even as creatures with claws, horns, and fangs. They haunt us in our cell memory as psychic manifestations of instinctive fears and desires.

In New Age circles, the letting go of ego is supposed to be a relaxing thing, right? A beautiful experience accompanied by the sweet aroma of incense and the exotic twang of a sitar? Nowadays we often assume that New Age relaxation techniques are simply designed to help us relax after a busy day at the office. But that’s not why shamans and other mystics originally developed relaxation exercises. They designed them to counter the frightening phenomena of demons. To teach us how to let go as the demons rise.

Oblivion Monster

Mouth-of-Hell detail from a Church painting

Stefan Lochner (1435)

It’s quite simple, really. The scenario of ego death often arises as an intensely unpleasant vision. Thanks to predators and other natural forces, many of our prehistoric ancestors witnessed death in horrifying ways. It should be no surprise then that relaxing and letting go might trigger a deep cellular memory of an actual, terrifying death. A memory of fangs and claws in the night, tearing you to pieces. Or a memory of the roaring sound of an approaching mudslide. Or of the moans and cries of people dying all around you after a natural disaster. Or even of a sudden bang, as when lightning strikes or a bomb explodes. In particular, auditory hallucinations, like explosions or rumbling, are quite normal for us as we drift off to sleep. Usually we manage to suppress the memory of these sounds, but they happen to us all the time.

If these last few paragraphs are a bit too much to take in right now, you might want to read some previous articles in Forbidden Realms, in order, and work your way up to the ideas presented here. Particularly, article numbers 6 through 11.

What is the Devil?

As I’ve also mentioned before, one of humanity’s deep-seated evolutionary traumas is the master trauma of them all, which some people refer to as the core wound of our species. This core wound is the lord of all the other demons.

Quite simply, this fundamental trauma involves the formation of a separate self. A split between mind and body. The division between self and world. Apparently, evolution has favored the development of an imaginary mind that is somehow housed inside the body, in some kind of insulated chamber somewhere. This is the ego. A fictional identity that lives inside a mental box of delusion. The ego imagines itself as a kind of “ghost in the machine,” while its supposed host body mills about in a world full of imaginary threats and imaginary scarcity. A world of fear and desire.

The ego helps its host body become more and more clever at seeing everything in the world in practical terms. As separate, manageable objects and separate, distinct entities. It makes us more clever at chasing after desirable prey and escaping from fearsome predators. As it drives us to move around in nature, the ego itself isn’t driven by pure awareness. It is driven by the fear and desire mechanisms that arise from its biological matrix. It is driven by conditioning, and as a result, it tends to see hostile entities all around itself.

The most hostile enemy of all, eventually, ends up being anything associated with its own dissolution. Hence, the oblivion monster. The Devil.

Since the ego is imaginary — with no inherent existence other than its fantasies about itself — this poses something of a problem. The world itself, the world as it actually is, does not include anything in itself that is truly apart from itself. The world as it actually is does not for one second take seriously the idea of the ego. And so, the world itself seems indifferent to the desires of the fragile ego. The world becomes a threat to us. Reality as it actually is — the material world — becomes evil. The Earth herself becomes associated with the Devil.

“May the Earth be accursed, may the Earth be accursed, a thousand times be accursed because from it that heavy fog and those black vapors continually rise that ascend from the dark passions and hide heaven and its light from us…”

— Christian theologian Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet

From its adventures as the imaginary driver, controlling the physical body from its imaginary perch somewhere inside the head, the ego develops beliefs that help reinforce behaviors that successfully maintain its host body’s survival. These habits and beliefs, no matter how pleasant or painful they may be, get reinforced whenever they succeed in helping the host body survive. Natural selection has favored the development of the ego. Even if survival is achieved in a painful and inefficient way, the habits and beliefs that produce evolutionary success still get reinforced. Survival and self-maintenance seems to be the ego’s primary mode of operation. This blind kind of selfishness and self maintenance comprises what Eastern mystics refer to as karma. A self-perpetuating cycle of delusion.

One of the driving forces of the make-believe self is its constant feeling of “unsatisfactoriness.” That nagging feeling of “I’m not good enough. If only I could get some of that good stuff, over there.” Or…“If only I could get away from this thing I’m afraid of that’s nagging me right here.” These fictional scenarios of fear and desire — these scenarios of endless push and pull, of ceaseless suffering, self versus other — are what has driven humans to become such a powerful force on the Planet. To conquer Mother Nature. Or to at least pretend to do that. Our illusory world of suffering compels us to kill, exploit, explore, and consume our way to a position of ultimate control and planetary dominance. It is why we are so prosperous and virtually unchallenged by any other predator. And of course, if we continue to rely on this separate ego self for our evolution, we will probably damage our global habitat and be forced to evolve in very unpleasant ways. Or we may even go extinct. Something needs to change.

Tantric meditation doesn’t just get us to be mindful of our thoughts. It bypasses thought. Goes straight for the heart of the matter and targets the ego for elimination. It brings about the infamous “letting go” attack. Naturally, it will feel like you’re dying, but if you are able to let go, you wake up from your false persona. The ego completely dissolves, and if it reforms at all, it is no longer the same. It no longer operates as a separate self but as a mere instrument in the hands of the entire universe. The ego settles down and allows the true, universal Self to emerge.

Letting Go of the Faust Story

So, why is the Devil such a bad guy? Because he represents the death of civilization’s control freak. Not only that, but also because the letting go of the ego frees up an extraordinary amount of energy. Letting go makes you powerful. Not only does it help you let go of what civilization has told you to be, but it also liberates the energy that you needed to maintain that fake persona. Perhaps you are beginning to see why it is such a taboo thing to do magic, much less to do magic that summons up the core trauma of our species (the Devil) to set you free. Tantric magic and meditation frees you from civilization’s ignorance. It makes you powerful in the most unexpected way. Naturally, this kind of transformation is a threat to civilization as it currently functions.

It should come as no surprise, then, that the Christian Devil takes the form of a pagan god — for it was old pagan magic that posed a threat to the civil order of frantic control. It was old pagan magic that still retained some traces of the old shamanistic rites of magical initiation.

Which path should you take at the crossroads? Forget about the path of good and the path of evil. The decision between right and wrong that religion has laid out before you is a diversion. A false dilemma. In the hands of religion, the crossroads becomes a big “X” of censorship. It attempts to cover up the core wound of our species. To keep you from healing it. If you conjure up your fear of death and feed yourself to that fear — dissolving both it and yourself — both paths at the crossroads are open to you. It was misleading for anyone to ever tell you that you had to choose one or the other. The supreme irony of the Devil at the crossroads is this: If you let go of everything, you can have it all.

“Tantric” Meditation Techniques

I have spent almost thirty years exploring these Tantric techniques. As you may have seen in previous articles, I use the word “Tantric” quite liberally, referring to any kind of practice, whether Eastern or Western, that induces the “letting go” attack. And I’m now in a position to compile a list of the most powerful exercises for you. These are the methods that give you the most bang for your effort.

Tantric exercises are much easier than Zen or “calm abiding” forms of meditation. Tantra does not try to make you a peaceful or “good” person. Or to produce some kind of impossible, abstract state of mind. Nor does it try to make you into a well-behaved hard worker, spending hours and hours, or sometimes even entire weekends, in meditation. Twenty minutes per day should be enough, plus 15 minutes after waking and 15 minutes before sleeping. Tantra works with the body. And with the imagination. It gives your thirsty, neurotic mind something to do, even as it dissolves that thirsty, neurotic mind. You use imagination and the physical body to unearth and eliminate the root cause of suffering: your sense of a separate self. That is the only goal.

In the previous article, I revealed that the Buddha used magic to conjure external demons in the four directions of north, south, east, and west. He then settled down to meditate. He sat down to deal with the core demon, his imaginary split between mind and body — between himself and the earth—that is the root cause of all the other demons. This demon is not “out there” somewhere in the four directions of space. He is inside you. His dimension is vertical, not horizontal.

The demons of the four directions are merely offshoots of the core demon. In medieval times demons that arise out there in the world were called imps. “Imp” is an old agricultural word for a baby plant that has arisen from the shoot of another plant. So it would seem that the Buddha used ritual to deal with the offshoot demons first, and then when he sat down to meditate, he dealt decisively with the master demon of them all. The core trauma of separation. This gulf of separation in some traditions is referred to as the abyss, so it could come as no surprise that demons and devils are said to rise up from a bottomless pit. In the Buddha’s culture, this demon was named Mara, the lord of death, rebirth, and desire. In European culture, it is the Devil.

In this article, I am disclosing the kind of meditation techniques the Buddha was likely to have used. Note that these techniques do not simply involve concentrating the mind or any other attempt to keep you safely trapped in the shallows of your thoughts. These techniques are much deeper, more relaxed, and simple. They involve dissolving the supposed mind, relaxing the body, and releasing the flow of imagination. They are “magical” forms of meditation, if you like.

The techniques come in three forms. The first form is for before and after sleep. The second, most intensive form is designed for the meditation room, to be practiced in solitude once per day. And the final form you can practice almost anywhere while you’re going about your daily business. For them to work, you’ve got to practice them without fail. You are to never miss a daily performance of each one. That’s three exercises each day, at the very least: after sleep and before bed, plus the meditation-room session some time — any time — during the day. The “In Daily Life” exercises are optional — though highly recommended. If there is anything “harsh” or relentless about the discipline of Tantra, it’s the discipline of never missing a daily required performance.

I furthermore advise you to take full responsibility for what happens as a result. If you are not willing to take full responsibility for what you get out of your daily Tantric meditations, do not do these exercises at all.

These activities may seem like nothing special. They are not necessarily trance techniques, and you may not notice anything weird or “psychedelic.” Tantra does not try to hypnotize you. It does the opposite. It wakes you up from the hypnosis of civilization.

Remember that the purpose of these activities is simply to induce the “letting go” attack. Nothing more. Don’t bother with visualizations of any other desired outcome because that will only strengthen the grip of desire and fear, and ultimately delay your final release. Moreover, do not be discouraged if you do not manage to let go during these exercises. The “letting go” attack won’t come for you while you’re anticipating it. More than likely, it will come for you in the night when you least expect it. Probably between waking and sleep. And when it comes, do not be afraid. Let go.

Here’s a brief table of contents, followed by the exercises themselves:

Table of Contents

Before and After Sleep

1. Pore breathing

2. The tattered shroud

In the Meditation Room

1. The posture of pure awareness

2. The crossroads ritual

3. The fountain of light

4. The fountain of Aeëtes

5. The gap between thoughts

6. AUM

7. The sand boil

In Daily Life

1. Be aware of your feet

2. The halo exercise

3. Transparency

4. Scanning for affrontedness

5. Synesthesia

Before and After Sleep

Do one of these two exercises in the morning and one of them in the evening. Right after waking up and right before going to sleep.

1. Pore breathing

This is one of the most powerful exercises, and it’s one of the easiest. I recommend doing it upon waking up in the morning. Instead of languishing in your alarm’s snooze cycle, do this exercise instead. Practice it for 15 minutes. Use a timer.

Lie on your back comfortably. Lie in a somewhat “formal” position to signal your body to stay more or less awake. Lie in a straight line, legs together, hands on top of one another on your chest or belly. Close your eyes. Now let the whole body go limp. Utterly relax. Allow the mattress or mat beneath you to completely support your weight. There is no need to hold yourself up anywhere. Or to hold yourself together. Just let go.

Now visualize the pores of your skin, all over your body. Breathe in through the nose. Make sure you lead each breath with the belly (If belly-breathing is unfamiliar to you, check out articles 1 and 2 of Forbidden Realms). As the breath comes in, visualize the pores of your skin, millions of them, opening up to take in the air. Your whole body is like a sponge, sucking in air through its pores from all around. The inside of your body, likewise, is made of spongy material, mostly air, and your in-breath wafts the air throughout every recess of every limb. There are no areas where the air fails to permeate.

Breathe out and visualize the air exiting the pores, and all spongy spaces in the body slightly diminishing all throughout. The pores shrink but do not fully close. The interior of the entire body, likewise, remains slightly open, such that the air in all interior spaces is completely connected to the air outside the body. There are no “compartments” within that are completely “sealed off,” as it were. At this point, you are ready to receive the next influx of air — however, just for a moment, let the lungs hang empty without breathing. Wait until the next slight urge to breathe kicks in.

Breathe in again, leading with the belly. See and feel the air from all around flowing into the pores of the skin, into the honeycombed, spongy depths of the body, permeating every recess. Make sure you include the space inside your head. No interior space is exempt from this visualization.

Note any habitual resistances. What areas of your body resist opening? Relax them too. Continue pore breathing this way, exploring your body’s interior sensations, until the fifteen minutes pass.

Even though I have given you the important step of letting the lungs hang empty between breaths, this exercise will still very likely bring your carbon dioxide (CO2) blood level a little too low. That’s why I recommend doing this exercise in the morning before getting up. Once you get out of bed and begin moving around, the body’s muscles will generate CO2 and return your blood chemistry to its usual balance. If you do the pore breathing exercise before going to sleep and you find that your nose gets congested some time during the night, your CO2 is shifting out of balance (too low), and you should probably limit the pore breathing exercise to the mornings.

2. The tattered shroud

I recommend doing this exercise before going to sleep, but you can also do it upon waking. Just lie there in bed, or on a mat, resting completely still, in whatever position you like. Let your sensations of the bed or mat, as well as the placement of your limbs, become monotonous. That is, when you allow yourself to lie totally still, all your bodily sensations gradually fade.

Artist Unknown

Notice that you eventually begin to lose track of where your limbs are. You’re no longer certain of where every part of your body exists in space. It’s almost as though parts of you have begun to disappear.

See these missing spaces as gaps, as though you have partially dissolved. Whatever remains of your body begins to resemble a tattered shroud. Parts of it still exists, probably because the motion of your breathing is still producing at least some sensations, but other parts of your body are now gone, as though fading from sensation is the same thing as fading from existence. See these gaps in perception as filled with light. The space all around you is likewise filled with that same boundless, transparent brilliance, and this brilliance shines through all the gaps in your half-dissolved body. The portions of your body that remain are little more than a tattered shroud, suspended and buoyant in the light. Weightless. Born aloft. Lit from within by the boundless radiance of what you really are.

Do this for 15 minutes, or longer if you like. If the mind wanders or your visualization becomes weak, you can occasionally speak a word or phrase in your mind, such as “floating,” “fading,” “suspended,” “weightless,” and “lit from within.” Words, when used magically like this, can keep your mind from drifting away from the body. They help keep visualization grounded. No intense concentration is necessary for any of these exercises.

For the Meditation Room

Each of these exercises, unless otherwise noted, should be done alone for 20 minutes. Use a timer. If you use a smartphone for your timer, make sure the phone is in airplane mode before you begin. If you are unable to secure a place where you can be alone every day for 20 minutes, then don’t bother with any of these techniques.

1. The posture of pure awareness

Sitting still and simply doing nothing for 20 minutes per day is itself a powerful therapeutic exercise. However, I recommend combining the posture of pure awareness with one of the other meditation-room exercises below. In order to get the most from your meditation-room exercises, you will need some kind of easy, upright, and well-balanced posture. I recommend obtaining a traditional meditation cushion and sitting on it in a half-lotus position.

The basics of the posture of pure awareness can be achieved in stages. First, position yourself comfortably on your cushion and bring one of your legs up to your groin, such that the heal of your foot is just beneath or next to the groin. Bring the other foot up to rest on your other leg’s calf muscle. Next, assure that you’re in an upright, balanced posture. This is usually best achieved by incorporating the following characteristics into your posture:

Pull the shoulders slightly back.

Let the chest stick out just a little.

Allow the lower back to drift backward slightly, effectively rocking the pelvis a little bit toward the rear.

Pull your neck back and slightly tuck in your chin. Imagine a there’s a string attached to the topmost point of your head, tugging your head gently upward.

Rest your hands on your thighs, palms upward. Either that or rest them in your lap, one on top of the other. Experiment with the hand placement until your posture becomes the most balanced and easiest to maintain. No strain.

Keep the mouth closed, teeth lightly touching. Allow the tongue to touch the roof of the mouth. The ideal tongue placement is the same as when you make an “-ing” sound when speaking.

Eyes should be closed. Either that or half-open and looking slightly downward. If you keep them open, I recommend picking a patch of the floor ahead, keeping the gaze steady upon it, with no particular effort to focus. If you do choose to keep your eyes open, continue looking at the same spot and do not let the gaze wander anywhere else.

For the first week or so, you may have to experiment just with the posture of pure awareness itself — and no other meditation-room exercise — until you get a balanced feeling of ease. It is slightly formal, but mostly easy and relaxed. Remain in the position for 20 minutes, periodically adjusting your shoulders, lower back, head, neck, and hands for ease and balance until you achieve a relatively comfortable sense of stillness. Some minor discomfort and effort is sometimes inevitable, and that’s okay. Eventually, you will be able to sit still with virtually no need to adjust anything. During the 20 minutes, you are not to allow yourself to get up, look around, move, or be distracted by anything.

Notice that your breathing is easiest from the belly, but that it is slightly restricted and shallow. That’s actually good. Shallow belly breathing is ideal. Ignore your modernized yoga teacher’s advice to “breathe deeply.” And do not bother sucking in your gut. If you have a protruding belly, just let it be as it wants to be.

A chair is also possible

2. The crossroads ritual

Once you’re comfortable with the posture of pure awareness, you might want to learn this little evocation and banishing ritual as a preliminary visualization — useful as a transition from your daily life to your seated-meditation work. Perform this exercise before you sit down to meditate on your cushion.

Start by standing upright and facing east (or in a direction that symbolizes east for you). Point your index finger outward (you can also use a dagger or a wand). Pivot in place, clockwise, and draw a glowing circle of protection around yourself at the level of your heart. Make the circle in a brilliant white, an electric blue, or a flaming golden light. Your choice.

In addition, if you like, you can draw four large, shining symbols around yourself and speak a sacred word or phrase of protection for each one, seeing it light up or “flame on” at the sound of your voice. Draw one in the east, one in the south, one in the west, and one in the north. For example, you might draw four Christian Celtic crosses in the four directions. Or four Jewish hexagrams. Or four Hermetic pentagrams. Choose a potent symbol that comforts you and that you think could be used as a magic shield of protection to ward off evil in the dream realm. Along with your magic circle, these symbols are visualized as protective companions that hover around you at the level of your heart.

Now facing east, visualize yourself at a crossroads. There are four paths radiating out from where you stand. One goes straight ahead across a meadow. The path to your right proceeds to the south through a desert landscape. Another path trails away behind you, proceeding down a beach and disappearing into a blue ocean. And the path to your left proceeds to the north through a narrow, rocky mountain pass.

Now imagine things happening in each direction. Looking east, touch your index finger to your forehead just above and between your eyebrows. To steady your hand, you can put your middle finger on one cheekbone and your thumb on the other. Say out loud, “The Wind blows.” Keeping your index finger on your forehead, visualize the following: Storm clouds have erupted in the distance. There is lightning and thunder on the horizon. See and feel a strong hurricane-force wind rushing at you. It carries leaves, debris, and droplets of rain, hurtling them at you at speeds strong enough to cut your skin! However, your magic circle protects you. See it deflecting the powers of the air element, keeping you safe.

Turn to face south, touch your forehead, and say “The fire burns.” A raging fire appears on the desert path. The ground there is apparently flammable, and the fire spreads quickly toward you, threatening to engulf you and burn you up! However, your magic circle protects you, and the fire cannot enter your meditation space.

Turn to the west, touch your forehead, and say “The water flows.” See a massive wall of water rising up from the ocean, rushing at you. A tsunami! The water is moving at a frightening speed, and surely you will be overwhelmed and swept away. However, your magic circle protects you once again. It completely repels the water element. It keeps it from advancing any further than your meditation spot.

Turn to the North, touch your forehead, and say, “The earth crumbles.” You see a rock slide tumbling into the narrow gorge before you. Boulders threaten to spill out into your meditation space to crush you to death! But your magic circle is like an impenetrable force field, and it keeps you completely safe.

Now, sit down on your cushion, facing east. Touch your heart and consider the four elemental threats around you, each one in turn, starting in the east and proceeding clockwise around your circle. Feel each element’s texture, temperature, and characteristic movement. It’s as though your mind can easily reach out and touch and caress each element. Feel these sensations both “out there” beyond the safety of your circle and “in here” inside your own heart. Sympathize with each element. Empathize. Regard it as a living entity — or as though it is composed of numerous living entities. Understand how the element feels. Why does it do what it does? Where does it come from, and where is it going? Notice that none of these external forces is really your enemy. They just do what they do. No one is out to get you.

Still touching your heart, say the following incantation: “The wind blows, the fire burns, the water flows, and the earth crumbles. So let it be...” As though in response to your words, see the four elemental threats around you evaporate into empty space. You might see them dissolve into a cascade of flowers or into a swarm of butterflies. Or a shower of sparks. Or perhaps they simply disintegrate into a cool, soothing mist before disappearing entirely. Make a quick “blossoming gesture” with the hand that was on your heart, fingers “poofing open” like a flower.

You have dissolved the threat of external forces all around you. They have become “nothing personal.” Now it is time to engage in one of the exercises below.

3. The fountain of light

It’s time to conjure up that forbidden energy from beneath the crossroads! This is a very simple meditation exercise. After assuming the posture of pure awareness, imagine you are sitting at the crossroads at night in some peaceful, natural setting. However, your body only appears to be sitting on the earth. In truth, your body is protruding upward from it. Your body is made of earth, merely a mound of earth itself. A mound that has arisen in the shape of you.

Down below in the obscure depths of rock and soil, there is energy. It swirls round and round flowing upward in a corkscrew. In a counterclockwise, serpent-like motion. This is a natural energy of which most humans are unaware, and it rises up through solid ground, seeking to accumulate in higher places like hilltops or mountain peaks. Places were it can shimmer and dance like St. Elmo’s fire under the stars. It rises up through your body now. See it as sparkling shimmering motes of white light. If it begins to take on another color, go ahead and allow it to do so.

As the energy swirls, bubbles, and effervesces upward through your body, note any places where it might find resistance. Relax those areas. Note also that a central column of light begins to form. A more pronounced stream of sparkling, shimmering energy rises up through your center of gravity. Allow your attention to rest upon this central column of rising light. If visualization causes you any strain, look for any areas of tightness in the body, particularly in your head. There is no need to “concentrate” to maintain such a simple and pleasant visualization. Let the tensions go.

After several minutes you may begin to notice a tingling at the top of your head, so allow the stream of energy to rise up beyond the crown. It may want to form a sphere up there, or it may simply spray outward in a shower of misty sparks that rain back down to the earth. Whatever it wants to do as it proceeds upward and out, just let it go.

Rest the mind in this central stream of rising light for 20 minutes. Maintain a vision of the whole column, and note whether it tends to fade out in any particular part of the body, such as the abdomen. If it fades, feel it sparkling there. Bring it back. If distracting thoughts pop up, simply speak gentle words in your mind to bring you back to the visualization. Words like “fountain,” “scintillating,” “sparkling,” “shimmering,” or “Up, up, up.”

4. The fountain of Aeëtes

In the novel Circe, by Madeline Miller, there’s a Greek god named Aeëtes who describes what it feels like to be a god: “Like a column of water that pours ceaselessly over itself, and is clear down to its rocks.” This is another way of visualizing the fountain of light experienced in meditation-room exercise #3.

Instead of seeing energy or light, see the central column as composed entirely of flowing water. This cool, absolutely clear water rises from a spring deep in the Earth. It rises straight upward, without turbulence, all the way to the top of your head where it pours out over your whole body, descending in sheets of chilly, soothing lusciousness. It cleanses you both inside and out with its pure, natural goodness. Allow it to flow like this until the 20 minutes is done.

5. The gap between thoughts

I used to puzzle over the advice of meditation gurus when they would say strange things like “Rest your mind in the gap between your thoughts.” I really didn’t know how to go about this, since it seemed as though any effort to find “the gap” would simply constitute another thought. Well, as it turns out, visualization is not necessarily the same thing as thinking. A well done visualization is free of thoughts. Here’s one way to do it:

Once you have done the Fountain of Light exercise for a couple of minutes, you can change the image. Allow your mind to disappear into the central column. Note that within the column of light, there is another column that comprises its essence, a pure and completely empty space. There is nothing in there. Just completely free and open consciousness. Pure buoyancy. Nothing to hold on to. Nothing whatsoever to get hung up on. Notice how this free space widens for you, accepts you, and takes you in. All around this gap of pure space, your thoughts and various other mental processes continue to swirl round and fly upward into the sky, simply passing you by. These thoughts look like autumn leaves dancing on a steady updraft, or like peaces of ticker tape that fly upward, wafted into the sky above a parade.

As you continue to rest in this central column of boundless buoyancy, you may get distracted. A thought may arise and you may drift off somewhere. When you notice this, simply visualize that thought as words scrawled on a piece of ticker tape. The thought — in the form of a floating, tumbling strip of paper — now drifts to the side of your central column and rises up, flying up and out through the top of your head. It falls away with all the other bits of paper that represent other mental processes. Your primary attention remains on the inner emptiness, surrounded by its swirling updraft of “thought bits.”

The central column of spaciousness and absolute abandon might eventually expand very large for you. Its boundaries may even disappear over the horizon, and you might simply allow yourself to fall into limitless emptiness and disappear into boundless freedom. This spaciousness might take on other feelings, such as pure colorless brilliance, absolute crystalline perfection, or adamantine certitude. Or a sense of an immense squeezing pressure, heaviness, soothing warmth, boundless joy, or perfect love.

If nothing amazing happens, that’s okay too. Whether you are imagining these things or they come up spontaneously, it makes little difference. There is no need to achieve anything interesting or special. These exercises are not necessarily going to enlighten you while you are doing them. The “letting go” attack that results from them will most likely come at some other unexpected time (!).

6. AUM

This one is particularly useful if you have habitual tension that tends to block the flow of energy in your body. As you practice the Fountain of Light, you might want to chant “AUM” repeatedly. Each chant should be long and drawn out. About 8 or 10 seconds. It should be relaxed but fairly loud and sonorous. As resonant as possible. With each chant, you should attempt to produce as much vibration in the body as you can.

“Aaaaah-ooooooh-oommmm.”

The “Ah…” phase tends to vibrate the abdomen, the “…oh…” phase vibrates the chest, and the “…mm” phase vibrates the skull. Use these vibrations to “coax the energy upward.” The sensations should help you loosen up any tightness or pain so that the Earth energy can rise from the lower parts of your body to the higher.

7. Sand boil

If you’ve ever seen a sandy river bottom near a natural spring, you may have seen something called a “sand boil.” A sand boil happens when water flows up from holes in the limestone beneath a sandy river bottom. The water disturbs the sand momentarily as it rises through it, making it look like a constantly erupting or “blossoming” cloud.

Here’s what a sand boil looks like

This meditation is useful for those of us who have difficulty sensing and coaxing out the Earth’s energy. Doing this meditation daily will eventually open up your more subtle senses.

Start by assuming the posture of pure awareness. Then do the Wim Hof method. See this article for the Wim Hof breathing technique. With each breath-hold, assume your steady meditation posture and relax the chest and head, allowing any intense sensation to rise up from the lower body to your crown, uninhibited.

After the final breath-hold, allow the lungs to hang empty, taking in only a tiny breath. Maintain a slightly hypoxic state by continuing with small, shallow, and slow belly breaths — only as much as you need to keep discomfort at bay. Continue to monitor the sensations in your body, and note any buzzing or tingling that continues as the result of your more intensive, earlier breath work.

As the tingling continues, visualize the whole body as though it were a cloud of erupting sand — like you might see when you come across a sand boil near a natural spring. It should be as though your whole body really isn’t solid. It only appears to have a solid form because of the pattern the sand boil is producing. You are a sand boil in a human shape! The whole of your human form is nothing more than a cloud of erupting sand, propelled by the waters of life that flow up all over your body from some unknown, invisible depths. All the “particles” of your being are suspended and buffeted into their human shape by a continuous up-flow of vitality from a mysterious inner source. Feel the tickling, cascading, and dancing sensation of the “sand particles” in the “water.”

In Daily Life

Do these exercises as you go about your daily work and play. They can easily be done in public, especially while you are standing in line or walking from one place to another. The effect they induce is quite the opposite of that produced by a smartphone. Not only will your personal magnetism increase, but you’ll have more energy. You can do these exercises even while you are interacting with others, and especially while you are listening to them speak. You might be surprised at the effect they produce in your overall likeability.

Overall, these exercises are designed to reverse the Western tendency to divorce mind from body — and mind from nature. Practice any of them at any time you feel like it. It’s usually a good idea to pick one of them and then make it your secret spiritual practice for the day. Something you do in public that no one notices.

1. Be aware of your feet

As we go about our daily business, the Westernized culture all around us compels us to live in our heads. Not only that, but it compels us to be elsewhere, always on to the next great deal or new thing. When we stand in line at the grocery store, we tend to check our smartphones or smirk at tabloid images, looking for something that is supposedly happening elsewhere. Anything but be here, fully present, experiencing our bodies. Anything but face up to enlightenment. This very simple Tantric exercise directly reverses your tendency to be absent and elsewhere.

Keep your attention on the sensations in your feet. That’s really all there is to this trick. But if you’d like to make something more magical out of it, you could imagine that each foot has a “bubbling well” within it, just behind the center of the ball of the foot. Essentially, this is a mini-version of the sand-boil exercise. Visualize a sand boil inside each foot. The sand boil image represents the energy of the Earth, rising up into your body.

2. The halo exercise

Visualize everyone around you as though every person has an angelic halo. You have one too. It is the brilliant white light of enlightenment. Some people have it emanating from their heads, and some from their hearts. Golden rays beam out of each and every halo, offering warmth, comfort, and compassion to everyone else all around.

This exercise serves to break down the make-believe sense of “otherness” that we experience in ordinary states of ignorance, tribalism, and selfishness.

3. Transparency

There’s a funny story about a man who attempted to insult the Buddha. Naturally, the Buddha was not offended. He replied to the man: “May I ask you a question?” The man nodded. “If you offer someone a gift, and the gift is declined, to whom then does the gift belong?” The man was already calming down as he responded: “It belongs to the person who offered it.” The Buddha smiled, “You are correct. So if I decline to accept your attempt to hurt me, the hurt is still yours to examine.”

The exercise of transparency can be done when you find yourself irritated by events around you. For example, you might be enjoying a romantic dinner in a restaurant when suddenly a baby begins screaming uncontrollably at a nearby table. Your irritation flares up. You have become offended. How inconsiderate of them to bring that undisciplined child out in public! This irritation arises, of course, because the ego has a habit of resisting reality when things don’t go as planned.

You might notice that your sense of being offended is actually much worse than the surprise you might experience when a baby cries. To remedy this, imagine yourself becoming transparent. The noise of the disturbance passes right through you. No need for imaginary boundaries of self-hood. No need for imaginary walls or shields of protection. The baby’s cry is just an unpredictable natural event, like rain or a gust of wind. You yourself are also a natural phenomenon and the events in nature simply pass through you like a wave passes through its own ocean.

You can also do this when someone says something to criticize you, or even if someone is bold enough to insult you. With such an exercise, if you are quick to utilize it, you can become invulnerable to offense. Of course, you can still tell an attacking person that his or her use of words is inappropriate. And you might even be amazed at how they respond when their insult is unable to find any landing place within you.

4. Scanning for affrontedness

This is a very subtle exercise. If you have been doing the crossroads banishing (meditation-room exercise #2), you will probably start to notice whenever you have the tendency to resist reality. You may gain an awareness not only of your own feelings of resistance, as in when something unplanned happens, but you’ll also notice an attempt to raise up an imaginary shield of protection whenever you perceive any kind of affront. Even if it’s simply someone boring you with a pointless story, going on and on about the dream they had about you last night, you might notice the urge to raise up your arm in defense. You might even catch yourself scratching your forehead, a subtle way of disguising your urge to ward off an unpleasant experience.

When you notice this sort of pinching, puckering, or shield-making sensation in your psychosomatic space, address it immediately. See this tense form of resistance as a shield or as a force field and simply dissolve it into burst of flower petals or butterflies. Or into a shower of soothing mist. Go about your daily business watching for these irritations, and look for opportunities to dissolve your habitual defenses against reality just as it is.

There are many, many imaginary blockages like this in your psychosomatic field of awareness. Many of them are internal, particularly in regard to the wild energies that exist in the lower parts of your body. Staying alert for these blockages, and using imagination to dissolve them, will help you get closer and closer to experiencing the universe as it actually is — in all of its naked and dangerous splendor.

5. Synesthesia

This one is particularly good to do while you are walking somewhere by yourself, or while you are standing in line. Focus on the textures and colors of the physical objects around you. Notice physical sensations. And the physical sounds and smells. The sensation of the cool breeze as it passes over you. Experiment with noticing these things differently, in terms of other senses. Hear sights. Listen to colors. Smell textures. What melody might the wind be singing to you as it plays with your hair? What sounds are those gravel-strewn cracks in the sidewalk making? What does the wail of that siren look like as it fades in and out, echoing off of the walls of passing buildings? What does the vibrant green of an orchid’s leaf feel like inside your body?

Experiencing one sense in the form of another is called synesthesia. Many artists experience the world in this way quite naturally, without having to do any awareness techniques at all. The benefits of synesthesia are countless, but in particular, the practice of it will help you become aware of how your cellular memory gets triggered by ordinary daily stimuli. You become aware of how people become triggered, manipulated, and hypnotized by their senses. There is so much hidden knowledge from millions of years of evolution waiting to get prodded out into the open by our ordinary senses. Your awareness of a much deeper universe is trying to rise and speak all the time, if only you would allow it to break through the bounds of your ordinary, compartmentalized senses.

And so, what about that frightening letting go attack? And that roaring sound that comes over you as though the world is going to end? What is that rushing, prickling sensation of energy that threatens to overtake and annihilate you? What’s that all about? Where does it come from? Well, some would say that it is sexual energy. Notice that I’ve been avoiding the subject of sexual Tantra, even though the word “Tantra” normally makes people think of a kinky celebrity bragging about an all-night sex jamboree where she experienced her first one-hour orgasm.

In the next article, I’ll have a guest author. We will discuss sexual Tantra, some myths and truths about it, and one or two techniques for using sex to achieve enlightenment. Stay tuned!

Getting in on Forbidden Realms

Article #1 ~ Is Holding Your Breath Good for You?

Article #2 ~ Breath Techniques that Restore Primal Health

Article #3 ~ Fasting to Restore Primal Health

Article #4 ~ The Secret Fire of the Ancients

Article #5 ~ The Healing Power of Darkness

Article #6 ~ The Secret of the Grail

Article #7 ~ The Philosopher’s Stone

Article #8 ~ The Dragon of Within

Article #9 ~ How to Project Power

Article #10 ~ Where It Is Darkest

Article #11 ~ The Secret of the Raja

Article #12 ~ Meditation Versus Ritual

Article #13 ~ Meditation’s Darkest Secret