Toward the Sacred: A Sitting

This exercise builds on the "Toward Consciousness" exercise, mastery of which should be considered a prerequisite.

Find a quiet place where you will not be interrupted. Sit upright and comfortably. When you work at this at your own pace, give each part of this inner exercise the time and attention it needs to fully flower.

Relax into your body.
As your body becomes relaxed, sensation comes to the foreground throughout. Shift your attention into the sensation in your whole body. With the intention to enable the sensation to grow stronger, hold your attention in the sensation in your whole body.
3. Your feelings primarily manifest in the general area of your chest. Allowing the sensation to continue throughout your body, shift your primary attention to the area of your chest. The feeling energy, which is the sensitive energy of emotions, is both the substance of our feelings and the substance that enables us to be in contact with our feelings. With the intention to strengthen the feeling energy in your chest area, hold your attention in the feeling energy there.
Allowing the sensation throughout your body and the feeling energy in your chest to continue, shift your primary attention to your head, into the mind or cognitive energy. With the intention to strengthen the mind energy in your head, hold your attention in that energy in your head. Do not allow your attention to wander with any thought; just notice the thoughts come and go. If there are no thoughts or mental images, just hold your attention in your clear mind.
Open your attention to all three centers simultaneously, to the feeling energy in your chest, the sensation throughout your body, and the mind energy in your head. Hold that posture of attention, so that you yourself are fully present.
(Optional) Reach out into the air with your attention and draw the energies from the air, shimmering particles of energy. Draw them into your body, feelings, and mind. You can do this either by breathing the energies in or by drawing them directly through your skin. Either way, meet the energies with your presence in the three centers, to build up and stabilize the energy of the centers. After the energy in each of the centers is built up well, stop drawing energy from the air and stay fully present in all three centers.
Conscious energy has no boundaries. Let go of being the content of your mind, emotions, and physical senses (second fana). At the same time, allow yourself, your attention, to open wide, beyond the confines of your body, but including it. Enter the sea of consciousness, the conscious awareness that fills the space around you, the peace of pure awareness, prior to any material perceptions. Enter the cognizant stillness of consciousness that surrounds and permeates you.
Enter the realm of Sacred Light through a two-fold action. First, inwardly reach toward the Sacred. Turn your heart, mind, and attention toward opening to the Sacred, beyond consciousness. Inner repetition of a sacred word or prayer or melody can help, if it touches your heart, your being, and enables you to open to the Sacred.
Second, let go of the illusion of being someone. Empty yourself. Let go of being yourself, your name. Let go of being the one who is conscious. Let go of being your innermost self, your real I. Approach empty-handed. Recognize that you are not separate, that your I, your will, is intimately and everlastingly a particle of the higher will of the Sacred. Let go of being anything at all (third fana). This is not about killing off anything, rather seeing that you never existed as separate entity to begin with.
Focus both on opening to the Sacred and on letting go of being anything. Let these two approaches, active and receptive, blend into a synergy that transcends them. Maintain that search, that focus, even if and as energies cascade into you.
Let go of the exercise. Sit quietly, not trying to shape your experience, doing nothing, to let it all settle.

Provenance of the Sitting

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