Re: One-pointedness status

[Amberlyn <amberlyn@...>]

Rawn wrote:
> As an experiment, I suggest that once you have flowed into it like the
> rush of a river (excellent metaphor, by the way!) and feel that you have
> filled it, then let go of the 'you' / 'it' polarity and allow yourself
> to become at-one-with it. One way of making that transition from
> "filling it" to "being it" is to use the emptiness of mind. In other
> words, at the point when you feel you have "filled it", enter into an
> emptiness of mind, releasing all thoughts entirely, and just BE.
>
> When you enter into the emptiness of mind from the starting place of a
> deep one-pointed focus, the point of focus has the effect of shaping the
> emptiness. It's like walking down a path that leads through a gate to a
> garden where you find the *essential meaning* of the thing you have been
> focusing upon.

Hi Rawn,

I have been away on a trip and thinking about the early exercises. 
Contemplation rather than meditation.... I had a thought that I would like 
to discuss with you. This is a loose holistic thought, so I am having 
trouble getting a handle on it.... please have patience with me.

First, elemental equilibrium: In the physical world, could this be seen as 
a balance in time spent attending to EARTH (health, nutrition, meals, 
etc.); FIRE (exercise, energy and motion); AIR (breath, mind and mental 
affairs); and WATER (bathing, hydrating, emotions and feelings of well-being)?

RM and I were discussing how when we focus, say, on the Bardon mental 
exercises (or spirituality in general), other habits, such as formal 
exercise, seem to suffer. It seemed to me that applying elemental 
equilibrium to Life is a point that Bardon makes but skims over (or perhaps 
we are skimming over it <shrug>).

In other words, does blessing a Big Mac and a super-coke really cut it 
<shutter>? I have known people who sit down to a huge platter of some 
heart-attack-on-a-plate and say it won't make them fat or ill, because they 
"mentally took the fat and calories out of it." Am I naive, or does that 
really work? When Bardon says to keep the body flexible, does he mean fit? 
Or does fall under whatever works for *me*?

Point Focus, etc: It seems that in Life, if we *focus* on what we are 
doing, such as being in the moment, we can find a point-focus, or at least 
a point-priority with it. Being in a flow - one with it - often allows me 
to fall into an emptiness of mind, inwhere I observe an alternate or 
expanded "reality," concerning whatever is at hand. Steady exercise does 
this. I am speaking here of a feeling somewhat akin to a "runner's high" - 
that moment, in physical point-focus, that slips into Something Else. 
Taking a long shower in the morning has also allowed me to fall into an 
emptiness of mind wherein solutions to issues in my life flow into 
consciousness. Dicing a quantity of food for a meal, peacefully alone, 
sometimes allows this too. Obviously I am also being carefully with the 
knife, but it feels like the hands are in control, rather than the mind. 
Hmmm. And why didn't I write MY hands and MY mind just then? This is what 
happens to me with this kind of point-priority. I become the Observer.

I think I am rambling. I know the mental exercises are important, and I 
will not abandon them. The point is that I have become very aware of the 
Bardon exercises manifesting in Life. They are no longer confined to 
meditations. Am I on track, or not?

Thanks,
Amberlyn