Who Am I? - Part IV - Spiritual Types
Here are the results of the fourth part:
82. You And The Other You
Left eye = right hemisphere
I am a sphere of consciousness A.
83. Are You Open To Unorthodox Philosophies?
I feel uncomfortable with such concepts and prefer more familiar religious concepts.
84. Philosophia Perennis
I am likely to be attracted to the Perennial Philosophy.
85. Which of Your Seven Chakras Are Active?
Meditation – Sit in a lotus position with closed eyes and imagine your base chakra radiating light. Feel the rays surging up to the sex center. You will begin to feel a certain heat generated there. This is an excellent sign that your imagination has triggered the energy. When that center becomes a source of light itself, move on to the navel, the heart, throat, between the eyes and the crown of the head. If the energy is moving strongly in the last three chakras, the head will feel very hot. You may feel dizzy the first time but it will pass. Allow the light to build up at the crown and then allow it to be released upward to the sky. If you continue the meditation regularly over a period of time you might experience an overwhelming, orgasmic explosion of bliss and insight, or even enter a sleep-like state known as yago-tandra. This is an extremely powerful meditation. When you do it, ensure there is no interruption and be careful always to complete the sequence through all the centers.
86. Are You In Touch With Your Seven Bodies?
1 - The Gross Body (Sthul Sharir) – Forms during the first 7 years of life. Mystics say that some people never get beyond this stage, claiming no greater ambition than to live to eat. The chakra connected to this body is the Muladhara. The natural urge of this body is expressed through sex, while its transformation is claimed to be found in celibacy or brahmacharya.
2. - The Etheric Body (Bhawa Sharir) – The emotional body forms during the second cycle of 7 years and is fully developed by the age of 14. This point, at which sexual adulthood is achieved, is also when nature, having completed her part, withdraws and leaves the human being to develop on her own. The chakra, known as Svadhistara, connected to the etheric or emotional body, has a natural potential for fear, hate and anxiety (clearly corresponding to the action of the amygdala in the physical body). In its transformed state this body expresses compassion, love and fearlessness.
3 - The Astral Body (Sukshma Sharir) – This third body develops during the formative years of 14-21. This is the body devoted to reason and the intellect. The chakra associated with this body is Manipura. The natural and primary concern of this body is of doubt and thinking which creates the inability to act. When transformed it radiates trust, clear discrimination and awareness.
4. The Psychic or Mental Body (Manas Sharir) – The fourth body is of the imaginative and speculative realm. It is the territory of the shaman(ess), the psychic and the sorcerer. In this dream body it is difficult to distinguish between delusion and reality. The potentially diverting siddhic powers that arise in many meditation techniques like Tantra or Yoga originate from this body. Dreaming takes place here and its ultimate expression can be found in the lucid dream - in which the individual wakes up within a dream while the body remains asleep. The psychic states that have their basis in this body have no actual spiritual value, but they mark the bridge from the corporeal to the spiritual world. This body develops between the ages of 21-28 and the chakra associated with it is Anahata. The transformative quality that arises from this body is the ability to see the truth and reality of the situation rather than its dream.
5. The Bliss or Spiritual Body (Atma Sharir) – This body would normally develop by the age of 35. This is the awakening of the self or Atman. Here all the dualities of the first 4 bodies cease to be. It is the body of awareness and consciousness and the only obstacle for further development is an overwhelming ecstasy and sense of fulfillment enjoyed by this body. It is said that many mystics become entangled here at the very onset of their Buddhahood. The chakra associated with the bliss body is Vishuddha, which is located at the throat. That is the soul body and the state of Moksha or liberation.
6. The Cosmic Body (Brahma Sharir) – The sixth body with its associated Ajna chakra is where the blissful self of the fifth body is left behind and only beingness remains. There is now no self that can claim to be conscious, but only consciousness - only God, or Brahma, exists. The Ajna chakra is located at the third eye.
7. The Nirvanic Body (Nirvana Sharir) – This is the completion of the 7x7 cycle ending at the age of 49. Associated with the Sahasrara, or crown chakra. The obstacle to further development in the sixth body was Brahma, the absolute beingness. Once overcome, this final body is the journey into non-being, cessation and entering the void from which all came into existence. About the last two bodies which transcend all intellectual thought, nothing really can be said.
87. Are You A Believer?
I am an atheist with strong self-discoverer tendencies.
88. How Do You Approach The Three Basic Questions?
Alternative Paths of Self-Discovery
Where have I come from?
I am part of undifferentiated consciousness
Consciousness exists before birth
My essential being exists before birth
I have existed throughout time
I am part of the cosmic wheel
I must be reborn until I awaken to reality
Who am I?
I am born as consciousness
Through habitual strategies I build an ego
The personality and ego are false selves
I must awaken to truth of my beingness
I must discover who I am
I must become aware that I am dreaming
Where am I going?
Death/rebirth is a cycle until awakening
When you awaken there is no death
Death is an illusion of our minds
After death one prepares for the next life
Death is discovery and transformation
A mystic dies to the ego before bodily death
89. Sage and Sorcerer
I am a sorceress – concerned with empowerment.
91. Your True Religious Type
None of the religions fit me (Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Sikhism, Buddhism, Tao, Shinto)
92. Are You A Yogi? (body type)
Meditation (Vigyan Bhairav Tantra) – Sitting in a relaxed lotus posture, breathe normally and naturally. Be aware of each incoming and outgoing breath. There is a fraction of a second in which you stop breathing—a gap. Neither follow the breath in, nor move ahead of it, just move along with it. Consciousness and breathing become one. Suddenly you will be aware of the gap in which there is no breath. In that gap, suddenly there is beneficence— an awakening, a glimpse, a satori. But do not expect results overnight. It takes time. Buddha is said to have taken 13 lives to attain illumination. However, don’t despair—he used this method!
93. Are You An Ascetic? (body type)
Meditation – Milarepa spent many years practicing the discipline of Tum-mo, the awakening of the inner fire to heat the body to the sub-zero temperatures of the mountains. The following technique is an ancient meditation, very similar to that used by Milarepa’s Kargyütpas sect.
– The original technique was to “pierce part of your nectar-filled body and gentle enter the piercing,” but there is no need to be so aggressive toward your body. While sitting in meditation for any time there usually comes a point at which you become aware of a pain in your joints or back muscles. Concentrate on where the pain exists. The more you focus on the area the more you will notice that the pain intensifies but at the same time shrinks in area. Keeping your full attention on the shrinking point it will suddenly disappear and you will be filled with an overwhelming bliss and sense of beingness. The reasoning behind this method is that when observing you cease to identify with the pain. As you begin to enter the pain, as if from far away, you dis-identify with it and attain an inner silence. Feeling is transformed into observation which disrupts identification with the body, so that you are only conscious of being.
94. Are You a Dervish? (body type)
Meditation – This whirling meditation is only for those who are body- and feeling-oriented. It is a device to lose your head, while dancing the dancer becomes the dance. This meditation happens naturally in whirling. The head disappears as you find the experience centering in the heart. The energy and attention of the whirler moves from the heart to the navel, the center point of being. It is best to use loose clothing and have bare feet and navel. To start, cross your arms with the left hand on your right shoulder and the right hand on the left shoulder. Return to this position if you feel dizzy or nauseous. Move in whichever direction feels right. If you whirl in a counterclockwise direction, rotate your left foot in short turns while using your right food to act as the driving force. Raise the right arm, palm upward as if channeling energy through the body. (Reverse this if moving clockwise.) Keep the eyes open and unfocused so that what you see is blurred and flowing in a single line. Rotate slowly at first, gathering speed after the first 15 minutes as soon as you feel stabilized and comfortable. Let the dance take over until you become a whirlpool of energy with a silent witness in the center. At a certain point you will be whirling so fast that the body will fall by itself. Allow it. Don’t attempt to control when or how it happens. You will land softly and the ground with absorb your landing. Roll over onto your belly and allow your bare navel to contact the floor and remain in that position for at least 15 minutes.
95. Are You a Devotee? (feeling type)
Meditation – Devotion is always to something or someone outside yourself. It is a surrender to the other, of love, caring, prayer and dedication. In dissolving your identity in another there is transformation. As you enter the object of devotion, the ego, the mind and its false sense of self, disappears. The object is irrelevant. It can be God, a flower, or a beloved. It does not matter whether any of these are worthy of your love. Devotion is a way of life. This requires complete trust in life, 24 hours a day. But the path of devotion is ultimate freedom.
96. Are You Prayerful? (feeling type)
Meditation – (at night, before sleep, in bed or under the stars) Close your eyes and imagine a wide river of spiritual force overflowing around you. Start feeling it within the body as well. Allow your body to sway, to jerk or vibrate. This will show your imagination is beginning to operate. Do not try to dispel this by reasoning. Just allow it to happen. Feel that the whole space around you is de-materializing and becoming pure energy and spirit. Gradually your body becomes just energy and merges with the energy around you. While this is simply your imagination, it is beginning to de-program your fixed patterns of how you see the world. Continue until you begin to feel that the whole of existence is immaterial, just waves of oceanic energy in which you disappear and merge with an energy that is God, the totality of all there is. At this point a real prayer is born. This prayerful state will remain in sleep. If you continue to practice this for at least 3 months you will begin to feel that the whole of existence is really immaterial—just waves of oceanic energy in which you disappear and merge. And that energy is God, the totality of all there is. Prayer is born in the bliss of dissolution as the fixed and solid-seeming self evaporates, leaving just a prayer on the wind.
97. Are You A Lover? (feeling type)
Meditation – Choose an object that you find beautiful. It can be your beloved, a flower or some single treasured item. Look at it and lose yourself completely—become absent as you bring more love into your gaze. Allow whatever you have chosen to become the center of your love. Suddenly you have forgotten yourself and only the object remains and only the consciousness remains. Because you are absorbed in the other, bliss arises and the consciousness identified with your ego, your false sense of self, begins to move away from you.
98. Are You a Philosopher Sage? (thinking type)
Meditation witness identified – There are 2 ways of approaching thinking:
Bring your attention to the thoughts themselves, as if they were clouds in the sky on a summer’s day.
You can focus on the sky behind the clouds—on consciousness itself.
Whenever your mind wanders don’t attempt to stop it. Allow the thoughts to come. Just be aware they are gathering, passing by, but change the focus to the consciousness that is witnessing the thoughts. You can do this at any time. It is simple. No austerities, no breathing techniques are necessary. Whatever you are doing, just be aware of the mind itself, of the one who is thinking. This is the Basis for Zen Schools of Sudden Enlightenment. For the switch of attention from the thought to the witness, watching the thoughts pass is always sudden. It is not a gradual process. It is here, now and instant that the mind changes and with it the illumination, the glimpse of the reality of the situation. It is the THIS at the end of the description of the meditation. So be alert in doing anything. Move your focus from the thing to the mind itself, from the object to the subject and you will know who you really are.
99. Dare You Look At Reality? (thinking type)
Meditation Tibetan mystic Atisha “Treat all phenomena as a dream – Choose whichever suits your nature best. The message between each is to not take the world and its actions too seriously. The existential law is that the more serious you become, the more the world takes on substance and a heaviness. The more you are identified with the “Leaky Road” the more you feel as if you are wading through treacle. You become easily exhausted. Yes, things that seemed so important and serious one day are forgotten the next. Loves come and go, disputes happen and are resolved. Life is a continuous flux and nothing lasts. In the East this universe is even considered as nothing more than God’s play. View the world as if it were a dream—a mythic setting for dramas to unfold. Really imagine that you are dreaming all the events that surround you. Keep this attitude for a whole day and you will begin to feel lighter and more festive, you will find a distance arising between you and the events around you. You will become a wieness on a hill, watching things happen as if they were part of a pageant. In the last part of the meditation, before going to sleep, imagine you will wake up in your dreams. This usually needs time and persistence, but there will come a moment when you wake up while still sleeping. The experience of a lucid dream—in which you awaken in a dream yet know you are still asleep in bed—will give you a taste of what the mystics are describing.
100. Are You Split or Whole? (thinking type)
Meditation Gautama the Buddha – There are 3 ways:
Sitting quietly in a relaxed position watch your breathing. Feel how your body rises and falls with the breath. Bring your total attention to the belly. Gradually you will find that the mind becomes more silent. Allow thoughts to come and go but don’t identify with them—just watch the belly rising and falling.
Walk slowly, either outside or indoors, bringing your total attention to your feet. Keep your eyes on the ground and your moving feet. If anything catches your attention allow for it, give it your full awareness and move on whenever that awareness begins to falter. Return to focusing on your feet. Walk for 20-30 minutes.
Bring your entire attention to the incoming and outgoing breath through the nostrils—nothing else is needed. The mind stills and the silent witness arises.
101. You Are The Grail
Just be natural, for you are already that which you seek, and the more you try to find your inner nature in the outer world, the further you will be from it.
Our true nature is already pure and clear so any attempt to purify it would actually contaminate it.
Acceptance of who you are, perfect in your imperfections.