I had my first out of body experience when I was
seventeen years of age. I was lying on my bed in my old room with pictures of
Ezra Pound and Anne Sexton on the wall overlooking the corners of Sherman and Cedar
in West Peoria. This would have been my Junior year of high school, circa late
January or early February 1995. At that time the local NPR affiliate WCBU used
to have a classical ‘alternative’ radio which would play acoustic-folk (think
Ani DiFranco and Kristen Hersh) and trance-snyc-pop euro-flavored tunes. I was
lying on my bed wading through the inevitable ennui and angst of high school
listening to the radio when a track featuring a dulcet yet rather harmonic
harpsichord echoed into my bedroom. I
can’t fully explain what happen other than one second I was lying on the bed burnt
out, exhausted fretting re-entering the sunken social aquarium that was high
school and the next second I was out of my body, hovering above the room near
the planks of the ceiling fan my father had installed the previous summer. I
could see my body below, my forehead, my hair which was chiseled an
painstakingly aqua-netted to look like Jason Priesly’s enviable 90210 doo… On
the bed the lids of my eyes were welded open the size of half-dollars and my
mouth was agape. If there would have been a syringe lanced into my arm I would
have looked like I just O.D.’d. Somehow I felt like a sail, flapping in
skittered wisps, having no voluntary control of movements, somehow looking down
at my body I realized that I needed to re-enter the sarcophagus of me flesh and
somehow when I discerned that I felt myself spontaneously reeled back into husk
of my flesh my motor system was paralyzed. I could not move. My eyes were open
but I was stuck. It felt like I was trying to plop open some impenetrable lid
to a metaphysical sealing piece of Tupperware. Finally I was able to grasp what
felt like the knobs of my shoulders. I whirled myself up, coughing into my
eyes, bemused, lost, breath belting in static huffs above my chin.
I stood up, shaking, I walked over and unplugged the
radio.
“Fuck this New age shit.” I said aloud.
I vowed then I would never voluntarily meditate.
Never again.
The first Chakra is the Muladhara chakra, Mula
meaning “root” adhara meaning “base.” As Roslayn Bruyere states in her
splendiferous work WHEELS OF LIGHT, “We find our physical roots in the earth,
so the first chakra is the source of our groundedness.” The chakra is located
at the base of the spine, near the coccygeal area-code of the human anatomy.
The Muladhara chakra houses the Kundalini, the serpentine life force which
fuses like a stalk through all seven charkas granting illumination and mystical
awakening.
The color of Muladhara is red, a menstruating
splotch on a Rosicrucian garter. It is also said to be a lotus of four petals.
Meditation: I began my meditation on the initial
preliminary Chakra at 3 am in the morning 19 hours into my water fast. I’m a novice at best when it comes to the daily
discipline of meditation, having before followed the insight meditative
techniques of Joseph Goldstein’s guided Vispassana. There are several sonic-themed mediative attunement videos on Youtube the best I found being this highlighted one by PsimatiX. Via a series of deep breathing hurtles I dipped into a relaxed/hypnotic mediative state. My eyes remained loosely sealed, the red image of the Muladhara Chakra in front of me, on the screen of my laptop, awaiting to hatch, pecking free from its coccyx cacoon in a pebbles of light.
During meditative Paryushana I try to place myself in a sea of gratitude, thanx and love. As ref. in previous SS2 dates I have vat of remorse and bitterness that, try as I may, I still have a hard time sloughing (ie, Lindwurm skin fashion). I shovel off thoughts that are anvil heavy, weighing me down, jettisoning the gravity of despiar, the manacles of the past.
After abandoning the negative enerygy I place my galloon of distilled water in front of the image of the daily chakra. The water is in a traslucent jug with the name of the chakra written down the side.
Many people who meditate (or quote the rosary) brandish prayer beads stating a mantra as they lull themselves into a meditative state. My prayer bead is a mystical clod of copper that over the last decade has seldom left my pocket and has been my third testicle and my best friend (click here and scroll down to see and read about the metaphysical craziness that happens when I grope the copper). Sometimes I will say what is known in the Baha'i faith as the greatest Holy name but often I just try to align my body in a state of serneity. After thirty minutes of breathing, focusing on the chakra buttom blossming in a quadrant of pyramids in front of me I became astutely award of a 'buzzing' sound echoing from below my the back of my head, near my left ear.
There was no out of body experience after reeling myself out of this splunkering trance. After exiting the meditative stance I read in R. Bruyere's WHEELS Of LIGHT that a characteristic of each Chakra is that they have an animal associated with it. Via Joseph cambell's phenomenal lectures on the chakras (see Mythic Image) I was already aware that the root chakra is associated with dragons, "Dragons guard things. Heaps of gold, beautiful virgins. They don't know what to do with either of them." Campbell then correlates the second and third chakra to the hording of the virgins (Svadhishthana) and gold (manipura).
After my first meditative paryushana water-fast I fell over when I read in Ms. Bruyere atlas of experiecning the first Chaka that, "The bee and other insects that move like the bee have a rhytthmic movement in their legs and in their antennae. This movement relates to the first center.When that movemt becomes exaggerated or accelerated, it is then associated with flight. In people, when internal movemnt (energetic vibration) becomes rapid it can be said we are 'flying.' '
I remembered my initial out of body expeirence i had in my bedroom when i was seventeen and how it felt like i was involuntraily flapping, the drape of a school flag batting in the March zephyr. Rosalyn then posits, "We are lifting and moving in a way, expanding and moving in a way we had not been doing before. Because of this association the sound of buzzing is often related to the opening of the Kundalini. Consequently, the bumblebee became a symbol of the first chakra in the ancient world." When I think about bees I have a tendency to think about Nietzche's, "Geneaology of Morals," the preface where the author stipulates, "...our treasure is where the beehives of our knowledge are. We are constantly making for them, being by nature winged creatures and honey-gatherers of he spirit; there is one thing alone we really care about from the heart--bringing something home."
There are 12 days left of SS2...time to fast, to meditate, to yearn, to dream, to fuel the buzzing.
Time to bring something fucking home.
Or to release some power that has been hypnotically hibernating within us somehow all along.
There are 12 days left of SS2...time to fast, to meditate, to yearn, to dream, to fuel the buzzing.
Time to bring something fucking home.
Or to release some power that has been hypnotically hibernating within us somehow all along.
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