Creation Happens Within
Why Blue? – Try this!
After-Images are a true inversion of what we see.
Produced by the body, they hold the key to how incarnate consciousness is created.
Gaze at the dot on the blue-girl’s nose for at least 30 seconds
then switch to the grey panel below and gaze at the dot there.
If the image of a beautiful girl does not form before your eyes try again while paying
particular attention to keeping your eyes still on the nose-dot.
( Some people find it easier to look at the ceiling instead of the grey square.)
The learning from this is profound: Our own body is forming an inverse image of every sense impression we receive the whole time we are awake. Education has blinded us to this because we are told at school, in the news, in advertising every day to believe in the image of the world we are told about and not in the one our own senses give us. Our own experience is “Not scientific” “Not true” “Not socially acceptable” they tell us.
The wonder in Sounding Bowls is, in good part, that being new they allow us to bypass what we’ve been told and listen to what is actually happening. Gently we become aware that our heart is speaking in response to every note we hear, every overtone in the sounds we get bathed in.
Every one of our sense impressions is giving us the facts the whole time. In truth our inner responses fill in the missing bits. Just like the eye’s after image inverts the colour, thus completing the image, so our sense of touch pushes back when we tap our finger on the desk, our sense of hearing creates a rich split-second of graduated silence in response to a loud noise, our inner feelings tell us things about the person in front of us that our senses leave out.
This is not about judgements, I should emphasise that. Judgements come from other places in us than ‘this moment of experience.’ Judgements come from bringing the past into the present and not from really, truly, listening to inner responses. If we bring our judgement of what we should be seeing into the after-image exercise above we will not see the girl because we will be looking so hard for what we think we should see. if we let go and allow the experience to arise we have a good chance of seeing the magic happen. The space behind our eyes gives, into the space in front of us the true correspondence with/to what they just received.
The real magic of this is that, in paying attention to this apparition within we are re-connecting with our own source-of-being. Just by exercising this interest in what happens when our senses speak we actually strengthen the presence of our true self in the everyday matrix of our personality.
Every moment of every day we are bombarded with sense impressions.
Many of them pass without notice and the attention we pay to those we do notice forges our connection with the world we live in.
Every single sense impression, from the blast of a roller coaster ride to the whisper of a falling petal generates a response within us. Mostly, these pass without notice. When we become aware of our inner response to things it generates a connection with the inner world that creates us. This can become a type of meditation that ultimately strengthens our understanding of who we are. These inner responses begin with a form arising that directly relates to what we perceived, then move on to judgements and decisions. In the process offered below we are focussing on the form of the experience only, leaving aside any subsequent inner activity.
An after image arises in us something like the shadow of a sense impression. You have probably noticed some of the stronger after images that occur, such as looking away from a bright window leaving a square of light in front of your eyes. You may already have noticed that if the window holds blue sky the resultant square is orange or if it holds green grass the after image becomes red. These are witness to how the after image compensates for, balances out each sense experience.
For most people it is vision that gives the strongest after images yet the silence in our ears after a big bang is in some ways also an after image. Less physical results also arise from other sense impressions and paying close attention to what does happen in us in response to what happens TO us balances and empowers our presence in the world as individuals. Below are some exercises to help you notice what happens in your own after images leading into ways you can use your Sounding Bowl to deepen your presence in the moment.
Further exercises to play with
Example 1: Using a window frame against daylight sky.
- Choose a point where light meets dark, a crossing point or corner of the frame.
- Gaze this point steadily for a short while, at least 15 seconds without moving your eyes
- Close your eyes and notice the light and dark that appears under your eyelids. Does the shape of the window frame appear? What happened to light and dark areas of the view? What colours appear? What happens when you blink? How long does this image last?
- Is there a feeling response in your body as it appears? and as it fades?
NB I use the word gaze here for a steady looking at one point that allows the image to soak into you. I avoid the word stare because it implies a judging, a going out towards the object with an assessment in the look. Allowing the vision of the object to soak into you generates a more powerful response. Notice also how often a feeling of “OK, yes, got that arises and the attention wanders even if the sense receptors remain focussed. Try to let your attention rest on the subject, not just the sense itself.
Example 2: Using the inverted image above or a coloured wall, cloth or painting..
- For this one you need an area of very bland or little colour and an object with strong colour such as a painting, dress/shirt, napkin or anything intense.
- Gaze at the coloured object keeping your eyes steady on the centre, maybe there’s a detail there, or you can put a seed on the napkin or something to focus on.
- Transfer your gaze to a blank area, a piece of grey or white paper, a bland wall or similar. Gaze gently, allowing the image to come to you.
- Ask yourself what colour you are seeing now, bring up the memory image of the colour you were looking at and compare them.
- Feel into your body, where in you is the response to the feeling that these two generate, the memory picture and the sense image, where do you feel how these two “speak” to each other.
Example 3: Using a tree, a pot plant or suchlike.
- Gaze at the shape and colour steadily for a short while, allowing yourself to soak it in
- Move your gaze to another plant
- Bring up the memory image of the first plant and hold it in front of the plant you are looking at, so that you can see them both at the same time
- Feel into the difference between the two
- Feel into your body, where in you is the response to the feeling that these two generate, the memory picture and the sense image, where do you feel how these two “speak” to each other.
- Optional extra, to integrate the experience into your body, form a gesture with your whole body that gives you the same feeling as the feeling you get from the meeting of image and percept.
Example 4: getting more subtle.
- Choose an area of green growth, a tree canopy or field of grass.
- Choose a single point to gaze at for a few moments. Allowing the feeling of that green to enter you.
- Move your gaze to another area of green, a different tree/field, or even the same one in the shade as opposed to in direct sun, anything with a noticeable colour difference.
- Bring up the memory image of the first green and hold it in front of the area you are looking at, so that you can see them both at the same time.
- Feel into the difference between the two.
- Feel into your body, where in you is the response to the feeling that these two generate, the memory picture and the sense image, where do you feel how these two “speak” to each other?
- Watch the sunset each night and bring up the image of yesterday’s sunset to hold in front of todays, feel how one speaks to the other.
- Stand in a familiar spot and bring up memories of how it felt to stand here 3 months ago, 6 months ago, 9 months ago, comparing the seasons and weather experiences of one place.
Example 5: using a Sounding Bowl
- Pluck a note and listen in to it with that soft-focussed attention described above.
- Try to notice exactly when the sound fades out of hearing
- You may notice that the sound is repeating within you making it hard to pinpoint the exact moment of fading.
- Once you have identified the inner resonance that arises in response to listening watch how it behaves within you.
- Pluck a second note once the first one has faded and notice how the second note and the after image of the original one relate within you.
- Notice how it affects your feelings, your breathing, or any other aspect
- is there any inner posture that arises or any other shape-feeling in your body?
- – Optional extra, form a gesture with your whole body that gives you the same feeling as the feeling you get from the meeting of these two sounds. This moves from the senses to the muscles.
NB this can be applied to other sound sources also. Bells and gongs are good, birdsong take a little more practice but is profound. Notice again within you how different your response is.
Effects of doing any of this include:
- a growing awareness of my own personal response to my experience and how often that differs from what I have accepted as ‘true’ from science or from parental or societal opinion.
- A growing awareness of how naming a perception stops me from feeling it more deeply. the simple word “green” for example stops me from asking whether this is a yellow green, a blue or a brown green and how I actually feel in response to seeing it, in other words being present in the world with my heart open.
- A growing awareness of how important comparing is. In fact we always compare one experience with another unconsciously. Typically we then name what we see as better or worse, as wanted or unwanted, using emotions that cover up the experience as well as the object or person being viewed.
- I do not want to denigrate unconscious comparison. It is a positive contribution to being a separate individual, our personal likes and dislikes are a big part of what keeps us from being simply one of a herd. What matters is that through this exercise we discover how often our likes and dislikes are actually conditioned and not helping us to separate enough. Learning to compare in a conscious, questioning way, rather than from conditioned like/dislike responses builds soft boundaries with roots in the heart as opposed to our learnt hard boundaries with roots in our conditioning.
- Learning to compare without judgement becomes a HUGE freedom, placing us more fully in the world, setting us free from desire, allowing the world to relate to us without hindrance from our passions.
- Simply and profoundly the comparison of the after image with a new sense impression is the meeting place of inner and outer. Exercising this place brings your innate Self, the essence of YOU into a deeper, free-er, more living relationship.
See also: Do You Matter?
