In mid-february I am going on a 6-week retreat. The basic technique for the day will be doing nothing / witnessing / abhyasa & vairagya. I am planning to spend 1 hour with (Holosync and) energetic development à la Robert Bruce / NEW to support the growth process from the other (active & energetic) end, as an experiment (and stick with the direct path if there is interference). Has anyone experience with both observing and energy manipulation and maybe even practiced both simultaneously?

Hi Julius,

Yes, and I think the two approaches are quite complimentary. Robert Bruce has come up with some great techniques. If you are at a point where you can feel the energy moving while working through the NEW exercises – then when you have finished doing the energy work, reflect on the sensations of energy you feel in the various parts of the body – hands, feet, legs, spine, wherever. The most active areas will probably be the ones you worked with but you may also have a sense of the entire body as a field of energy as well.

At that point there are a number of ways you can go:
- simply stay with witnessing the energy. Simply observing how sensations come and go, move around, etc.
- notice that the energy is arising within a greater spaciousness and shift your identification more toward the spaciousness – that is, 'these sensations arise within a spacious awareness' or 'there is this spaciousness in which these sensations arise'. This will take you more into tranquillity.
- investigate the energy as it relates to other sensations in the body like tension, pressure, temperature, etc. What is the energetic quality of these other sensations?
- shift your attention to the pleasant aspects of the sensations and cultivate them. This will take you more into the jhanas. You could also cultivate a sense of gratitude toward your experience – this will give your experience a more metta quality.

The energy work will open up and help you become more sensitive to what is going on in the body - that greater sensitivity will then be present in the other practices you are doing.

-Chuck

Hey guys! My main interest right now with my practice is working with this stuff. I have an experience when I pray or just shift my attention to one of gratitude, my body shoots through with a lot of energy, and am becoming more and more present to an experience of when I am speaking about what lights me up I start feeling this intense tingling in my brain. And I am just wanting to know any suggestions on books or anything that would assist in working with this department. Part of me knows it's just energy moving through, and it will do what it does til I die. I have worked with energy that goes works against me, and I don't go there too much anymore. This energy feels like it is well worth exploring.

Thank ya,
JP

Hi Jeff,
Yea, there is a flavor of energy that kind of heightens/brightens the body/mind. Sounds like you have some skill in bringing that up. It's a good one to work with. Some things to play with:

Try cultivating that with whatever techniques you have figured out and then once you get the sensations try to just relax and open up to awareness of the whole body [important!]. Kind of invite those sensations to fill the body. Once you have things activated some – not necessarily throughout the body but some real clear sensations – then you can start dropping the technique and just cultivate the experience directly – a noting practice really – but here you are noting and encouraging or allowing the pleasant qualities of this to flow throughout the body and radiate outwards.

Beyond that, you can pay close attention to how this process works. Practice going in and out of it. Develop skill in cultivating it. You can incline your awareness toward subtler more refined elements in the energy and allow the body to fill up and radiate those in turn.

Basically what you are doing here is jhana (sutta style) based on metta and using this as your base for practicing insight. So the jhana here is a very open, attentive, and aware state where the energy kind of soaks in and permeates your awareness – if that makes sense.

Let us know how things go. Enjoy! I will look around for some books or talks on this and post them but really I think you got the 'end of the thread' so just start pulling on it.


-Chuck