Awareness Exercises
When the pot is broken,
the space within it is absorbed in the infinite space
and becomes undifferentiated.
When the mind becomes pure,
I do not perceive any difference between the
mind and the supreme Being.
-The Avadhuta Gita of Dattatreya
Mind, Body, and Spirit:
Many of these exercises are somewhat mentally oriented. Please be aware that you will get much more out of them if you are also doing some physical exercises such as Yoga, Pilates, Cardio, Rolfing, etc. These are general exercises intended to increase your awareness in a non-linear fashion. Your experience with the exercises may differ vastly from others. Most of them are open ended enough so that you will not be expecting a particular outcome or result and thereby blinding yourself from having your own unique experience. Most of these are awareness expansion exercises. So if you are having a problem with your empathy then you will want to look at the Grounding Techniques page.
After three to six months of performing many of these exercises I noticed a slow stream of significant changes in my awareness and ability to expand my awareness out of my body. I am now able to experience a deep empathy and clairsentience on any level I can identify. These exercises are very simple, but they will have a profound effect on your system if you apply yourself wholeheartedly.
Heart Awareness Exercises:
http://www.livingwaves.com/osho/atishaheart.htm
http://www.rickrichards.com/chakras/Chakras1H.html
These two exercises are pretty much the same thing. They are very powerful. If you cannot do visualization at all that is fine. Just physically be aware. Even that is a good start. Only thing is: do not do this exercise more than twice a week to start.
Repetition:
The second most important exercises after the heart/chest ones are, probably for most people, going to be the repetition exercises. Dan Scorpio has two papers that are very important. The first is titled Overcoming Conditioned Pattern, Repetition and Habit. The second paper is a set of 68+ observations that are very useful for becoming aware of your internal space. He has done all the hard work already. All you have to do is apply it.
Dan Scorpio's Exercises:
The Union of Mind and Body. This is a great starting place. I started with these before creating my own exercises.
Exercise Fly:
Stand outside in a pebble garden or area full of pebbles on the ground where flies are hanging out. If you don’t have this exact situation, you can still do the exercise. You have to find where flies are and use the landscape to your advantage. Pebbled concrete should work well too. It is better if the flys blend in with the landscape somewhat. What you will do is watch a fly with your peripheral vision. Doing the exercise on pebbles makes it more difficult to differentiate the fly and the background in your vision. Situate yourself in a manner like the Standing exercise with a single fly about 5-6 ft. in front of you; stand tall and look straight ahead – fixate your view on a point in front of you, but try to be completely aware of the fly as well. It will periodically move and it will move quickly. AFTER you see it SETTLE/STOP in a new location look to exactly where you think it moved. If it’s not there then locate it. Keep note of how accurate you were – are you repeatedly thinking it moved slightly lower/higher than it did? Just take note of it mentally. Keep doing this for as long as you can. Multiple flies will also make the exercise harder since you are trying to be aware of only one. A handful of pebbles may be helpful to locate the fly or just get it to move. It is preferable to let the fly move at its own pace so you can adjust to its time schedule as well.
Exercise Fly 2:
Try to catch flies on the ground. They should be the smaller quick ones – not the large slow moving horseflys. First move your hand very slowly and see how close you can get to touching the fly with your finger. Notice this. Notice the orientation of their bodies and which route they take to avoid your hand. If you can feel your hand graze the fly then you are close. “You cannot drag your ego into the molecular processes of life. These processes are a billion years older than the learned conceptual mind.” - The Psychedelic Experience
Pool Exercise #1:
In a totally calm and still pool of water step one foot in and then the next. Stand still. Notice the vibrations in the water. Do the standing exercise here. Contemplate what you see and feel. Maybe place something that floats in the water and watch where/how it floats. Do it at night as well.
Standing balance:
Take off your shoes. Stand on one leg for ten seconds. Now close your eyes and stand for as long as you can. Proprioception. Decouple the visual and proprioceptive senses so as to not overly rely on the eyes.
Dripping Exercise:
Watch water dripping from above (from a drain or overhang or a wet towel). Create a hanging apparatus out of a water bottle and a sprinkler head nozzle. Place this on your desk and just be aware of when the water drips (you will hear the bubble in the bottle). You can monitor vibrations, thoughts, feelings, etc, with this. This can probably be extended further or made into a better exercise to be internalized. You should be able to feel when it will drop. Have not investigated enough yet.
Peripheral Exercise Y:
“Break the habit of looking and then doing. Just try picking up a cup without looking at it directly.” In this exercise you go about your daily routine but act with the peripheral vision instead of directly/narrowly looking and then acting.
Peripheral Exercise Z:
You can do this one pretty much anyplace, but outside is best since there is more going on. Find a place to sit up straight and pay attention to the periphery. Birds, Bugs, Bees, Squirrels, Moving trees, anything. Just watch with the periphery for as long as is comfortable.
I Exercise:
Eliminating temporarily the following words, from audio internal dialogue and conversation, for observational purposes:
I, me, my, mine, you, your, yours, our, ours, us, them, we, he, she, his, her
And any variations of these possessive terms (I’ll, let’s, we’ll, hers, etc).
Every time you internally speak a sentence with one of these words reform the sentence to eliminate the word. Do not do this exercise for more than half a day at a time to start. This exercise is powerful.
Fantasy Exercises:
The next few times you are having a fantasy or imagined situation about yourself just stop and notice for one second that you are doing this. Now try re-imagining the same situation without you there at all and see how much energy that has.
Another technique to try is when you find yourself in the middle of an imagination about yourself – just stop the thinking immediately, but hold on to that feeling (may feel like “newness”,“brightness”, or a “tension”) and then relax into that feeling completely without doing anything. See what happens, how it feels.
Hanging pH Exercise:
Go outside and find an arm to hand length spider web thread. Carefully detach the thread from its location, being sure not to destroy a whole web in the process (take only what you need). Bring this thread inside and lay it down (a black sheet of paper will make it easy to see). Punch a hole in a small piece of pH paper. Any small paper will do though. Thread the spider silk through the hole and make a simple knot. Then hang this from a shelf. Sit back ~10 ft. and watch closely for at least 20 minutes.
The addendum/extension to this exercise is to look for your presence both inside and outside. Try doing it at a party. Then alone on a walk.
Hanging pH Periphery:
Using the hanging paper try to notice it with your peripheral vision only. Do both eyes of course. See how far you can go away from the paper and still see it in the periphery. Having multiple hanging objects in the same room will help with both eyes and finding your limits. Hanging a tiny picture is possible provided it weighs around or less than 200 milligrams.
Clock Location and Listening Exercises:
Have someone place one of those large/loud clocks outside (on different walls too) and listen to how it sounds in different places. I noticed that how you hear is obviously changed by the physical space around you. A better starting place for listening exercises is in the book Blind Zen, by Stefan Verstappen. He has some free exercises on that page.
Touch Exercise:
Collect 6 different small objects – they should be able to fit in the palm of your hand. Suggestions: two pieces of driftwood, a dry but still somewhat green stem with leaves on it, a dead/brown stem with leaves of a different plant, a very fresh plant piece, a plastic spider. Put all the objects in front of you and close your eyes and pick one up. Feel it for a few minutes. Place it in one hand, then the other. Put it on your forehead, throat, heart, stomach, and below the belly button. Just feel. Do that for all objects. Do not open your eyes at anytime.
Yin Vibration with seeds:
Find two seeds. Stack them precariously on top of each other. Place them on your desk or area of work. If they fall then place them back again.
Yin Vibration with chopsticks:
Find a pair of unbroken chopsticks (they are still together). Boil up some water in a pot. Hold the chopsticks over the water for about 25-30 minutes bending them. This will allow you to bend the chopsticks. Now place these on top of a lamp neck or other precarious place that will allow you to see the effects of your habitual vibrations and activity. If they fall, place them on there again.
Occlusion Exercise:
Hold your finger out in front of your face at arms length. Now move your arm from side to side in front of you while focusing on your finger. You will notice the background blurring and moving. Now do the same thing with your eyes focused on the background. Your finger will now blur.
To apply this, focus on a single flying wasp/bug on the grass. Notice how the background/grass moves. Now focus on the background and notice how it stays still. If you are doing this correctly your eyes will undergo a weird shifting sensation during the course of the exercise. This is very similar to the "eye jitters" you get on MDMA.
You can also set up a pendulum with something in the background as well. You can do this exercise with flys, bugs, bees, wasps, the moon, etc. Internalizing the awareness of the perception that this exercise shows you is important for other awareness exercises such as the Coming Home Technique.
Alex’s Uno Card Exercise:
Close your eyes. Just sit and relax the mind, listen to external sounds and feelings, have no expectations, then just ask what the color/number on the card is.
Alex’s Observations:
“I think some are born with a natural knack, but it does seem to be a slow development. Intent is really important. I noticed when I practice often with the cards, my accuracy is about 75-80%, but when time lags between [sessions], it goes down. Also having energy makes a difference. When I get tired or bored with it, especially if its late at night, there's hardly any result. I've heard that changing your daily schedule can stimulate it.”
Pictures Exercise:
The difficulty with doing colors as mentioned above is that if you switch cards too quickly due to impatience then the colors end up blending into each other in your perception when you switch to the next card. A much easier exercise to start out with is simply gather 3-5 pictures of your past. Maybe one of your childhood, your cat/dog, you in an embarrassing/shameful situation, a picture of someone you loved deeply. Now you should be able to close your eyes and distinguish/correctly choose the picture much easier since the image/shell is more distinct won’t be affected by blending so much.
Exercise 15, Thought Interrupts A by Dan Scorpio:
I have pre-made an mp3 file for this exercise. This will save you much time. Read the description first by Dan and then download the file to get started.
The Expression and the Idea by Hazrat Inayat Khan (Gatha III):
Actions such as a smile, or staring, or frowning, or nodding, or moving the eyes or the head, have ideas behind them. Externally it is a slight movement; behind it there is a mountain of thought. No movement is possible without a thought at the back of it. Sometimes it is known to the person and sometimes the person himself does not know why he smiled. The eyes express more than anything else, by their movements, the idea behind them. Very often intuitive people say, "I perceived from that person's look, pleasure," (or "displeasure") or "his favorable" (or "unfavorable") "attitude." And yet many do not know what movement, what expression, suggested to them what they perceived. Every expression of the eyes, the eyes which change their expression so many times in one minute, suggests the idea behind. This shows that the mind is an engineer and the body is a mechanism which it works. If the engineer becomes conscious of his working he brings about desirable results, but by unconscious working the engineer also becomes a mechanism.
There used to be courtiers in the ancient times in India who at every moment would know the state of mind and the attitude of the king, even to such an extent that very often everything was arranged as the king liked without him having uttered one word about it. There were nine courtiers attached to the court of Akbar; every one of them knew the state of mind of the Emperor at every moment. The Sufi, whose duty in the world is to live in the presence of God and who recognizes His presence in all His creatures, His personality especially in man, he fulfils his duty of a courtier with every man. A person who lives as dead as a stone among his surroundings does not know whom he has pleased, whom he has displeased, who expects of him thought, consideration, who asks of him sympathy or service, who needs him in his trouble or difficulty. People think insight comes by psychic development. Yes, it does come, but it comes most by the development of the heart quality. A loving person is a living person. No doubt the more living one is, the more difficult it is to live, and yet no difficulty is too great a price for living a real life.
The method which a mystic takes to perceive the mentality of another is that he takes the movement of the person and his expression as a guide to arrive at his thought, and he takes his thought as a guide to his nature. By realizing the nature of man he comes to know about the very depth of his being, and instead of having a part of the knowledge about a person he gets to know all about him. To know that one has done right or wrong, to know that one is wise or foolish is not sufficient. To have a complete knowledge of a person one must know if he does right why he does right, and if he does wrong why he does wrong, if he is wise what makes him wise, if he is foolish what is the reason of his being foolish; not only this, but also if there were a possibility of making the best of what the person is and trying to improve the person without him knowing it. A foolish person cannot get along with his own friend whereas a wise person can get on even with his enemy. The difference is that the one knows life, understands human nature and acts according to it, whereas the other, even if he wanted to act rightly, always fails and becomes disappointed in the end.
Practical Application 1: Image Exploration
Open up Youtube or another completely unfamiliar video. One that you have never seen. Preferably of one person talking to the camera in an unscripted fashion. Turn off the sound and watch. Maybe after 3-5 videos start going about your business, reading a book or whatever, and periodically look at the screen. Notice if you see any similarity internally in yourself with these external images.
Practical Application 2:
Watch unscripted Youtube videos without the sound. Determine what the person is saying or at least where they are coming from. Is this person assuming too much power? Are they angry? Full of love? Then watch it with the sound. You may even be able to guess some of the people’s names just by seeing their facial expressions and overall demeanor/countenance.
Another idea is to have one person transcribe the audio/speech of 5 videos and another person tries to identify the videos by watching them (without the sound of course) and by reading the transcriptions.
Practical Application 3: Exercise 9, Simple Mirroring, by Dan Scorpio:
You can also use the same Youtube videos for this exercise.
People Watch:
Go find a crowded place and sit down for an hour or two. Watch how people walk – their gait, their expressions, their patterns. Watch couples, wandering people, children, anyone that passes. Do not try to get caught up in your thoughts about them. Just watch. Two hours is ideal. You may discover something amazing.
The Door Watch:
I received this exercise in a dream. The exercise is somewhat different from normal or casual people watching. Here you want to make sure to find a place in which the people you are watching unclutch from their mental patterns. For example a doorway of a store or shop. Find a place with not too many people. Find a place where you are not the center of attention and where people are not interested in you much. See if you can streamline your normal thought and evaluation patterns into one unceasing flow of thoughts. What you will do is focus on the people that come in and out of the doorway. Be aware of them in that instant as much as possible.
Presence Exercise:
Try to sense whether the person near you (out of sight) is male or female. How old are they? How much do they weigh? What other things can you think of to sense about them at the outermost layer/shell/level?
Projections:
Go for a walk where you will encounter around 10-20 people passing by you. The first time you go on this walk be sure to be completely focus on the person/people passing. Notice them as soon as possible. Don’t say hi though. Just look at them. The next time you go for this walk mind your own business a little bit more. Instead of focusing on the passerby immediately just go about in a casual manner and then focus on the person at a much later time than you did before. Again do not say anything to them. Just look.
Ant exercise:
Another dream exercise. “My guru gave me an ant. Because, see there is a disconnect there – you can’t talk with it to find out what it needs, you have to feel it.” – shaved head guy. (image of baba neem in dream)
Entering into shells for extended periods:
These two following exercises are powerful. They are only “dangerous” if you are not prepared to have your consciousness altered for several days or weeks at a time. Do not take them lightly. Be careful what you wish for, you just might get it. You may, upon doing these exercises, feel something “drop out” or “drop away.” This is truly great.
Star Meditation:
Focus on the stars outside at night. Just put all of your eyes/feelings/attention/awareness into them. There are billions of them out there. One of them will definitely receive you. You should be able to stay in this shell for at least three days if you want. This is a powerful place to be and can bring up anger or any other negative emotions or feelings lying dormant inside you. See the Tree meditation for a less intense shell.
Tree Meditation:
Go out in nature for a long hike and you will notice how certain sections of the forest are more silent or tuned into a particular vibe/shell. When you reach this area stop and just look at one of the trees there. Don’t force anything. You can stay in this shell for a whole week if you like.
Candle Exercise:
Light one long candle. Approach it from the side/front with your hand flat. So the hand is horizontal, entering the layers of heat that the candle is emitting. Notice how it is much easier to detect the heat when you move your hand from the horizontal position into a more exaggerated 3-d position (like moving into a vertical orientation and then squeezing your hand slightly). So to make the exercise a bit difficult keep your hand horizontal. Try moving in slowly, then later faster. Use your own creativity.
Thought streaming:
Watch movie credits, without the sound on, and read through the names as quickly as possible. Start with just the first names. There are so many scrolling by that it will probably go faster than you can keep up. That is the idea. This exercise is intended to help you streamline thought into one continuous flow. Also see if you can "read" the names without repeating them in your mind. Watch several videos in English and then switch to another language.
Shadow Elimination:
This is an easy exercise anyone can do! Find a somewhat dim shadow on a wall or other surface. Now focus in such a way that the shadow disappears -- it will reappear automatically. You have to allow the two sides to blend. Keep making it disappear. Try this out for a while. Play around with it. Notice how there are concentric shadows around the main shadow you did not even notice at first? See how many concentric shadows you can notice on different shadows around your house. The bathroom counter is a good place to find these usually.
Shadow Movement:
Go out at night when the moon is really bright and watch your shadow. The moment you find your shadow try to feel/see which way it is moving. You should be able to tell very quickly. Watch it for a while.
Bug Display:
This is the simplest exercise on here yet very important. Please find a spider or some other crawling bug. Make sure it is doing its thing, moving along, (it has to be moving in some way). Now suddenly focus all of your attention on this bug. Find at least 10 more and do the same thing. You will notice that the bug can tell when you enter its shell because it will stop moving at the moment you enter. It knows.
The Hunter Construct:
First become familiar with the Coming Home Technique. You should be somewhat familiar with the levels of yourself by doing that exercise everyday for at least a week. Now sit down. Set your intent to learn about yourself. Go into the environment, body, and mind levels as deeply as you can. Then only pay attention to the mind and environment levels. Let the body disappear from your awareness or at least let your awareness of the other two levels increase. Stay here for an hour or two if you can.
Internal Voice Awareness:
The intent of this exercise is to become aware of anytime you start using the passive voice internally. Every time this happens during internal dialogue make a mental note by saying, “I am using the passive voice again!” and then reform the sentence to use the active voice. Use of the passive voice avoids responsibility. It hides things. Also eliminate temporarily, for observation purposes, the word “you” from your internal dialogue.
“Don’t use ‘you’ when speaking to yourself, use ‘I’ and give yourself control of your emotions.”
“Use verbs of choice such as won’t, prefer to, choose to, like to, want to instead of should, ought to, need to, have to, cannot.”
“A sentence written in passive voice is the shifty desperado who tries to win the gunfight by shooting the sheriff in the back, stealing his horse, and sneaking out of town.”
Empty Bed Technique:
When you are laying in bed before sleep try to imagine yourself in another bed that you slept in during the past. Completely shift your awareness and imagination so that you now believe or feel you are in that other bed in that other room. Try several different locations from your past.
Spoon Carrying:
Fill a spoon with water. Carry it around wherever you go that day. Observe how it modifies your thoughts and movements.
Disappearing Act:
Get a small dish towel (5"x5")
Lay down in a comfortable place and put this towel on your face.
Then let the towel disappear from your perception.
Then let your face disappear from your perception.
Doorway Awareness:
An interesting place to meditate on/in is a doorway. Make sure you are physically standing inbetween rooms. It could be a door in your home, bathroom, closet, your workplace, etc. These are total transition places and most people are not aware of this kind of space. Meditate on how it feels for five or ten minutes.
the space within it is absorbed in the infinite space
and becomes undifferentiated.
When the mind becomes pure,
I do not perceive any difference between the
mind and the supreme Being.
-The Avadhuta Gita of Dattatreya
Mind, Body, and Spirit:
Many of these exercises are somewhat mentally oriented. Please be aware that you will get much more out of them if you are also doing some physical exercises such as Yoga, Pilates, Cardio, Rolfing, etc. These are general exercises intended to increase your awareness in a non-linear fashion. Your experience with the exercises may differ vastly from others. Most of them are open ended enough so that you will not be expecting a particular outcome or result and thereby blinding yourself from having your own unique experience. Most of these are awareness expansion exercises. So if you are having a problem with your empathy then you will want to look at the Grounding Techniques page.
After three to six months of performing many of these exercises I noticed a slow stream of significant changes in my awareness and ability to expand my awareness out of my body. I am now able to experience a deep empathy and clairsentience on any level I can identify. These exercises are very simple, but they will have a profound effect on your system if you apply yourself wholeheartedly.
Heart Awareness Exercises:
http://www.livingwaves.com/osho/atishaheart.htm
http://www.rickrichards.com/chakras/Chakras1H.html
These two exercises are pretty much the same thing. They are very powerful. If you cannot do visualization at all that is fine. Just physically be aware. Even that is a good start. Only thing is: do not do this exercise more than twice a week to start.
Repetition:
The second most important exercises after the heart/chest ones are, probably for most people, going to be the repetition exercises. Dan Scorpio has two papers that are very important. The first is titled Overcoming Conditioned Pattern, Repetition and Habit. The second paper is a set of 68+ observations that are very useful for becoming aware of your internal space. He has done all the hard work already. All you have to do is apply it.
Dan Scorpio's Exercises:
The Union of Mind and Body. This is a great starting place. I started with these before creating my own exercises.
Exercise Fly:
Stand outside in a pebble garden or area full of pebbles on the ground where flies are hanging out. If you don’t have this exact situation, you can still do the exercise. You have to find where flies are and use the landscape to your advantage. Pebbled concrete should work well too. It is better if the flys blend in with the landscape somewhat. What you will do is watch a fly with your peripheral vision. Doing the exercise on pebbles makes it more difficult to differentiate the fly and the background in your vision. Situate yourself in a manner like the Standing exercise with a single fly about 5-6 ft. in front of you; stand tall and look straight ahead – fixate your view on a point in front of you, but try to be completely aware of the fly as well. It will periodically move and it will move quickly. AFTER you see it SETTLE/STOP in a new location look to exactly where you think it moved. If it’s not there then locate it. Keep note of how accurate you were – are you repeatedly thinking it moved slightly lower/higher than it did? Just take note of it mentally. Keep doing this for as long as you can. Multiple flies will also make the exercise harder since you are trying to be aware of only one. A handful of pebbles may be helpful to locate the fly or just get it to move. It is preferable to let the fly move at its own pace so you can adjust to its time schedule as well.
Exercise Fly 2:
Try to catch flies on the ground. They should be the smaller quick ones – not the large slow moving horseflys. First move your hand very slowly and see how close you can get to touching the fly with your finger. Notice this. Notice the orientation of their bodies and which route they take to avoid your hand. If you can feel your hand graze the fly then you are close. “You cannot drag your ego into the molecular processes of life. These processes are a billion years older than the learned conceptual mind.” - The Psychedelic Experience
Pool Exercise #1:
In a totally calm and still pool of water step one foot in and then the next. Stand still. Notice the vibrations in the water. Do the standing exercise here. Contemplate what you see and feel. Maybe place something that floats in the water and watch where/how it floats. Do it at night as well.
Standing balance:
Take off your shoes. Stand on one leg for ten seconds. Now close your eyes and stand for as long as you can. Proprioception. Decouple the visual and proprioceptive senses so as to not overly rely on the eyes.
Dripping Exercise:
Watch water dripping from above (from a drain or overhang or a wet towel). Create a hanging apparatus out of a water bottle and a sprinkler head nozzle. Place this on your desk and just be aware of when the water drips (you will hear the bubble in the bottle). You can monitor vibrations, thoughts, feelings, etc, with this. This can probably be extended further or made into a better exercise to be internalized. You should be able to feel when it will drop. Have not investigated enough yet.
Peripheral Exercise Y:
“Break the habit of looking and then doing. Just try picking up a cup without looking at it directly.” In this exercise you go about your daily routine but act with the peripheral vision instead of directly/narrowly looking and then acting.
Peripheral Exercise Z:
You can do this one pretty much anyplace, but outside is best since there is more going on. Find a place to sit up straight and pay attention to the periphery. Birds, Bugs, Bees, Squirrels, Moving trees, anything. Just watch with the periphery for as long as is comfortable.
I Exercise:
Eliminating temporarily the following words, from audio internal dialogue and conversation, for observational purposes:
I, me, my, mine, you, your, yours, our, ours, us, them, we, he, she, his, her
And any variations of these possessive terms (I’ll, let’s, we’ll, hers, etc).
Every time you internally speak a sentence with one of these words reform the sentence to eliminate the word. Do not do this exercise for more than half a day at a time to start. This exercise is powerful.
Fantasy Exercises:
The next few times you are having a fantasy or imagined situation about yourself just stop and notice for one second that you are doing this. Now try re-imagining the same situation without you there at all and see how much energy that has.
Another technique to try is when you find yourself in the middle of an imagination about yourself – just stop the thinking immediately, but hold on to that feeling (may feel like “newness”,“brightness”, or a “tension”) and then relax into that feeling completely without doing anything. See what happens, how it feels.
Hanging pH Exercise:
Go outside and find an arm to hand length spider web thread. Carefully detach the thread from its location, being sure not to destroy a whole web in the process (take only what you need). Bring this thread inside and lay it down (a black sheet of paper will make it easy to see). Punch a hole in a small piece of pH paper. Any small paper will do though. Thread the spider silk through the hole and make a simple knot. Then hang this from a shelf. Sit back ~10 ft. and watch closely for at least 20 minutes.
The addendum/extension to this exercise is to look for your presence both inside and outside. Try doing it at a party. Then alone on a walk.
Hanging pH Periphery:
Using the hanging paper try to notice it with your peripheral vision only. Do both eyes of course. See how far you can go away from the paper and still see it in the periphery. Having multiple hanging objects in the same room will help with both eyes and finding your limits. Hanging a tiny picture is possible provided it weighs around or less than 200 milligrams.
Clock Location and Listening Exercises:
Have someone place one of those large/loud clocks outside (on different walls too) and listen to how it sounds in different places. I noticed that how you hear is obviously changed by the physical space around you. A better starting place for listening exercises is in the book Blind Zen, by Stefan Verstappen. He has some free exercises on that page.
Touch Exercise:
Collect 6 different small objects – they should be able to fit in the palm of your hand. Suggestions: two pieces of driftwood, a dry but still somewhat green stem with leaves on it, a dead/brown stem with leaves of a different plant, a very fresh plant piece, a plastic spider. Put all the objects in front of you and close your eyes and pick one up. Feel it for a few minutes. Place it in one hand, then the other. Put it on your forehead, throat, heart, stomach, and below the belly button. Just feel. Do that for all objects. Do not open your eyes at anytime.
Yin Vibration with seeds:
Find two seeds. Stack them precariously on top of each other. Place them on your desk or area of work. If they fall then place them back again.
Yin Vibration with chopsticks:
Find a pair of unbroken chopsticks (they are still together). Boil up some water in a pot. Hold the chopsticks over the water for about 25-30 minutes bending them. This will allow you to bend the chopsticks. Now place these on top of a lamp neck or other precarious place that will allow you to see the effects of your habitual vibrations and activity. If they fall, place them on there again.
Occlusion Exercise:
Hold your finger out in front of your face at arms length. Now move your arm from side to side in front of you while focusing on your finger. You will notice the background blurring and moving. Now do the same thing with your eyes focused on the background. Your finger will now blur.
To apply this, focus on a single flying wasp/bug on the grass. Notice how the background/grass moves. Now focus on the background and notice how it stays still. If you are doing this correctly your eyes will undergo a weird shifting sensation during the course of the exercise. This is very similar to the "eye jitters" you get on MDMA.
You can also set up a pendulum with something in the background as well. You can do this exercise with flys, bugs, bees, wasps, the moon, etc. Internalizing the awareness of the perception that this exercise shows you is important for other awareness exercises such as the Coming Home Technique.
Alex’s Uno Card Exercise:
Close your eyes. Just sit and relax the mind, listen to external sounds and feelings, have no expectations, then just ask what the color/number on the card is.
Alex’s Observations:
“I think some are born with a natural knack, but it does seem to be a slow development. Intent is really important. I noticed when I practice often with the cards, my accuracy is about 75-80%, but when time lags between [sessions], it goes down. Also having energy makes a difference. When I get tired or bored with it, especially if its late at night, there's hardly any result. I've heard that changing your daily schedule can stimulate it.”
Pictures Exercise:
The difficulty with doing colors as mentioned above is that if you switch cards too quickly due to impatience then the colors end up blending into each other in your perception when you switch to the next card. A much easier exercise to start out with is simply gather 3-5 pictures of your past. Maybe one of your childhood, your cat/dog, you in an embarrassing/shameful situation, a picture of someone you loved deeply. Now you should be able to close your eyes and distinguish/correctly choose the picture much easier since the image/shell is more distinct won’t be affected by blending so much.
Exercise 15, Thought Interrupts A by Dan Scorpio:
I have pre-made an mp3 file for this exercise. This will save you much time. Read the description first by Dan and then download the file to get started.
The Expression and the Idea by Hazrat Inayat Khan (Gatha III):
Actions such as a smile, or staring, or frowning, or nodding, or moving the eyes or the head, have ideas behind them. Externally it is a slight movement; behind it there is a mountain of thought. No movement is possible without a thought at the back of it. Sometimes it is known to the person and sometimes the person himself does not know why he smiled. The eyes express more than anything else, by their movements, the idea behind them. Very often intuitive people say, "I perceived from that person's look, pleasure," (or "displeasure") or "his favorable" (or "unfavorable") "attitude." And yet many do not know what movement, what expression, suggested to them what they perceived. Every expression of the eyes, the eyes which change their expression so many times in one minute, suggests the idea behind. This shows that the mind is an engineer and the body is a mechanism which it works. If the engineer becomes conscious of his working he brings about desirable results, but by unconscious working the engineer also becomes a mechanism.
There used to be courtiers in the ancient times in India who at every moment would know the state of mind and the attitude of the king, even to such an extent that very often everything was arranged as the king liked without him having uttered one word about it. There were nine courtiers attached to the court of Akbar; every one of them knew the state of mind of the Emperor at every moment. The Sufi, whose duty in the world is to live in the presence of God and who recognizes His presence in all His creatures, His personality especially in man, he fulfils his duty of a courtier with every man. A person who lives as dead as a stone among his surroundings does not know whom he has pleased, whom he has displeased, who expects of him thought, consideration, who asks of him sympathy or service, who needs him in his trouble or difficulty. People think insight comes by psychic development. Yes, it does come, but it comes most by the development of the heart quality. A loving person is a living person. No doubt the more living one is, the more difficult it is to live, and yet no difficulty is too great a price for living a real life.
The method which a mystic takes to perceive the mentality of another is that he takes the movement of the person and his expression as a guide to arrive at his thought, and he takes his thought as a guide to his nature. By realizing the nature of man he comes to know about the very depth of his being, and instead of having a part of the knowledge about a person he gets to know all about him. To know that one has done right or wrong, to know that one is wise or foolish is not sufficient. To have a complete knowledge of a person one must know if he does right why he does right, and if he does wrong why he does wrong, if he is wise what makes him wise, if he is foolish what is the reason of his being foolish; not only this, but also if there were a possibility of making the best of what the person is and trying to improve the person without him knowing it. A foolish person cannot get along with his own friend whereas a wise person can get on even with his enemy. The difference is that the one knows life, understands human nature and acts according to it, whereas the other, even if he wanted to act rightly, always fails and becomes disappointed in the end.
Practical Application 1: Image Exploration
Open up Youtube or another completely unfamiliar video. One that you have never seen. Preferably of one person talking to the camera in an unscripted fashion. Turn off the sound and watch. Maybe after 3-5 videos start going about your business, reading a book or whatever, and periodically look at the screen. Notice if you see any similarity internally in yourself with these external images.
Practical Application 2:
Watch unscripted Youtube videos without the sound. Determine what the person is saying or at least where they are coming from. Is this person assuming too much power? Are they angry? Full of love? Then watch it with the sound. You may even be able to guess some of the people’s names just by seeing their facial expressions and overall demeanor/countenance.
Another idea is to have one person transcribe the audio/speech of 5 videos and another person tries to identify the videos by watching them (without the sound of course) and by reading the transcriptions.
Practical Application 3: Exercise 9, Simple Mirroring, by Dan Scorpio:
You can also use the same Youtube videos for this exercise.
People Watch:
Go find a crowded place and sit down for an hour or two. Watch how people walk – their gait, their expressions, their patterns. Watch couples, wandering people, children, anyone that passes. Do not try to get caught up in your thoughts about them. Just watch. Two hours is ideal. You may discover something amazing.
The Door Watch:
I received this exercise in a dream. The exercise is somewhat different from normal or casual people watching. Here you want to make sure to find a place in which the people you are watching unclutch from their mental patterns. For example a doorway of a store or shop. Find a place with not too many people. Find a place where you are not the center of attention and where people are not interested in you much. See if you can streamline your normal thought and evaluation patterns into one unceasing flow of thoughts. What you will do is focus on the people that come in and out of the doorway. Be aware of them in that instant as much as possible.
Presence Exercise:
Try to sense whether the person near you (out of sight) is male or female. How old are they? How much do they weigh? What other things can you think of to sense about them at the outermost layer/shell/level?
Projections:
Go for a walk where you will encounter around 10-20 people passing by you. The first time you go on this walk be sure to be completely focus on the person/people passing. Notice them as soon as possible. Don’t say hi though. Just look at them. The next time you go for this walk mind your own business a little bit more. Instead of focusing on the passerby immediately just go about in a casual manner and then focus on the person at a much later time than you did before. Again do not say anything to them. Just look.
Ant exercise:
Another dream exercise. “My guru gave me an ant. Because, see there is a disconnect there – you can’t talk with it to find out what it needs, you have to feel it.” – shaved head guy. (image of baba neem in dream)
Entering into shells for extended periods:
These two following exercises are powerful. They are only “dangerous” if you are not prepared to have your consciousness altered for several days or weeks at a time. Do not take them lightly. Be careful what you wish for, you just might get it. You may, upon doing these exercises, feel something “drop out” or “drop away.” This is truly great.
Star Meditation:
Focus on the stars outside at night. Just put all of your eyes/feelings/attention/awareness into them. There are billions of them out there. One of them will definitely receive you. You should be able to stay in this shell for at least three days if you want. This is a powerful place to be and can bring up anger or any other negative emotions or feelings lying dormant inside you. See the Tree meditation for a less intense shell.
Tree Meditation:
Go out in nature for a long hike and you will notice how certain sections of the forest are more silent or tuned into a particular vibe/shell. When you reach this area stop and just look at one of the trees there. Don’t force anything. You can stay in this shell for a whole week if you like.
Candle Exercise:
Light one long candle. Approach it from the side/front with your hand flat. So the hand is horizontal, entering the layers of heat that the candle is emitting. Notice how it is much easier to detect the heat when you move your hand from the horizontal position into a more exaggerated 3-d position (like moving into a vertical orientation and then squeezing your hand slightly). So to make the exercise a bit difficult keep your hand horizontal. Try moving in slowly, then later faster. Use your own creativity.
Thought streaming:
Watch movie credits, without the sound on, and read through the names as quickly as possible. Start with just the first names. There are so many scrolling by that it will probably go faster than you can keep up. That is the idea. This exercise is intended to help you streamline thought into one continuous flow. Also see if you can "read" the names without repeating them in your mind. Watch several videos in English and then switch to another language.
Shadow Elimination:
This is an easy exercise anyone can do! Find a somewhat dim shadow on a wall or other surface. Now focus in such a way that the shadow disappears -- it will reappear automatically. You have to allow the two sides to blend. Keep making it disappear. Try this out for a while. Play around with it. Notice how there are concentric shadows around the main shadow you did not even notice at first? See how many concentric shadows you can notice on different shadows around your house. The bathroom counter is a good place to find these usually.
Shadow Movement:
Go out at night when the moon is really bright and watch your shadow. The moment you find your shadow try to feel/see which way it is moving. You should be able to tell very quickly. Watch it for a while.
Bug Display:
This is the simplest exercise on here yet very important. Please find a spider or some other crawling bug. Make sure it is doing its thing, moving along, (it has to be moving in some way). Now suddenly focus all of your attention on this bug. Find at least 10 more and do the same thing. You will notice that the bug can tell when you enter its shell because it will stop moving at the moment you enter. It knows.
The Hunter Construct:
First become familiar with the Coming Home Technique. You should be somewhat familiar with the levels of yourself by doing that exercise everyday for at least a week. Now sit down. Set your intent to learn about yourself. Go into the environment, body, and mind levels as deeply as you can. Then only pay attention to the mind and environment levels. Let the body disappear from your awareness or at least let your awareness of the other two levels increase. Stay here for an hour or two if you can.
Internal Voice Awareness:
The intent of this exercise is to become aware of anytime you start using the passive voice internally. Every time this happens during internal dialogue make a mental note by saying, “I am using the passive voice again!” and then reform the sentence to use the active voice. Use of the passive voice avoids responsibility. It hides things. Also eliminate temporarily, for observation purposes, the word “you” from your internal dialogue.
“Don’t use ‘you’ when speaking to yourself, use ‘I’ and give yourself control of your emotions.”
“Use verbs of choice such as won’t, prefer to, choose to, like to, want to instead of should, ought to, need to, have to, cannot.”
“A sentence written in passive voice is the shifty desperado who tries to win the gunfight by shooting the sheriff in the back, stealing his horse, and sneaking out of town.”
Empty Bed Technique:
When you are laying in bed before sleep try to imagine yourself in another bed that you slept in during the past. Completely shift your awareness and imagination so that you now believe or feel you are in that other bed in that other room. Try several different locations from your past.
Spoon Carrying:
Fill a spoon with water. Carry it around wherever you go that day. Observe how it modifies your thoughts and movements.
Disappearing Act:
Get a small dish towel (5"x5")
Lay down in a comfortable place and put this towel on your face.
Then let the towel disappear from your perception.
Then let your face disappear from your perception.
Doorway Awareness:
An interesting place to meditate on/in is a doorway. Make sure you are physically standing inbetween rooms. It could be a door in your home, bathroom, closet, your workplace, etc. These are total transition places and most people are not aware of this kind of space. Meditate on how it feels for five or ten minutes.
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