One of the most important parts of developing yourself is through exercise. Normally when we think about exercise, we think of physical exercise. This definition needs to be expanded in order to improve ourselves and by extension humanity.
I’ve said elsewhere that there are three great pillars of self-physical, mental/emotional, and spiritual. This essay deals with exercising the third pillar, the spiritual “body”. Note that the first two are foundations for the third-without a sound body, mind and heart, spiritual development is ineffective and possibly dangerous. Please take this warning to heart-if you overdevelop your spiritual abilities without having a sound body and psyche, you risk losing your way, possession, abusing your new abilities, insanity, etc.
Impatience often arises when these practices are first started. The spiritual realm is very subtle compared to the physical world, and sensations can be difficult to detect. I tend to look at it as if results were unimportant, and just do the practice for its own sake. That way the goal is irrelevant.
Also important to remember is that going too fast and far ahead can happen if you’re impatient. These exercises are meant to gradually increase in perceptual ability, so it’s crucial that the early exercises are mastered fully before the subsequent ones are attempted.
There are several beginning exercises that prepare the way for the more advanced ones-these are mostly for getting you into a state that allows the ones further along to be done properly.
- Cultivating respect for all things is one of the first steps. The ability to still one’s thoughts is also important.
- Pay attention to rocks, seeds, look for the inherent and potential in each.
- Move to plants, lower and higher animals, crystals and humans, trying to find the potentiality and energy in each. This is extremely subtle and will manifest as colors or impressions. They aren’t really colors, but the perception and impression that arises in you is best described that way. They’re more like a feeling, or an emotion, or a sensation.
- Look at humans in the throes of desire, before, during and after the desire is fulfilled. Look for intensity of thought and emotion.
- Look at yourself for the manner in which your thoughts, feelings and desires manifest themselves in how you sense them.
- Try to see them as separate from yourself and see what they do objectively.
- Try to compress and expand time-pull the moments around now into and away from yourself.
- Try to engage your perception during sleep and retain memory of that perception.
Some further exercises involve refining the way you perceive and interact with yourself and the external world
- Thoughts-Take a simple object or figure and methodically connect with what can be connected to it.
- Actions-Take a simple act not required in your daily life and do it every day. It’s best if the act is something that is part of an ongoing process (like taking care of a plant) but that is uninteresting in itself.
- Feelings-Avoid extremes of feelings and moods. Recollect a mood that would normally be extreme, and bring it in with inner peace.
- Positivity-Seek the good, ideal and beautiful in all things, even those not good, ideal or beautiful. Withhold criticism and judgment about the event-find a viewpoint that brings love and acceptance..
- Openness-Meet every new experience with an open mind, without prejudice.