A tree sends its roots down into the earth, reaching ever deeper in order to be nourished and stable, and at the same time it stretches upward toward the sky, toward the Sun, ever upward, against the pull of gravity. In a similar way, the human being is like a tree – we need materiality in order to experience and express ourselves in this form, and yet at the same time we are drawn upward, or rather back, toward our origin, toward our Sun of Spirit.
Living in a world where the material plane often dominates almost exclusively, this upward pull can sometimes be forgotten. Then longings arise – impulses to fill ourselves with things, with other people, with experiences, with substances… whatever form it takes for each of us. And yet, after some trials and tribulations of life, at some point one has to admit that these “horizontal” longings and pursuits never quite suffice. Yes – why is that? The sages say that the deepest, most yearning wound within every human being, upon which all our longings for relationships and things are layered, is separation from the Source. This feeling of separation (of separation that does not exist) arises more or less by default when we arrive in this reality. It provides the underlying tension that animates most if not all our other desires and aspirations.
In a sense, this quiet sense of separation is a kind of calling. It pulses in waves, through sensations and psycho-emotional states, through the most varied life situations. There are periods when this pulsation is stronger, periods when it is weaker. There are people in whom it is stronger, and others in whom it is fainter. For me personally, it took quite some time to understand that this pulsation – this call of the Return Path – was rather strong. In my youth, there were many interesting ways to temporarily substitute for it, especially through music, practical utopias, and the anarchic dreams of an intellectual. They were wonderful experiences. And yet, for more than a decade now, I have been walking this path of Return. Looking back, I have to admit that at the beginning of the journey I was in a rather complicated situation. Through the first experiences of unity – into spiritual pride, into seeing my own mental junk heap in all its splendor, into emotional madness, into misguided attachments, into physical collapse… whew.
But that is not the story here. The story is about Aspiration. About the pull back toward God. Yes, from time to time I will use the word “God,” by which I mean the non-dual, total Absolute – Brahman, Dao, Divine Consciousness… regardless of spiritual or religious tradition.
***
Over the years, I’ve recited plenty of mantras and prayers. For many years, mostly mechanically, with a few vivid experiences along the way – but now it feels like I’ve finally found my way in. It feels so right to me that I really want to share it with others. That is precisely the purpose of this article.
This approach has come to me through years of personal practice and practice under the guidance of teachers – as lived experience, as realizations, as what felt like compressed “downloads” that I then slowly decompressed over months – and also as more direct or indirect inspiration from a number of sources. In particular, authors such as Sri Aurobindo, Rudolf Steiner, Samuel Sagan, Daskalos, Mark Rasmus, Ibrahim Karim, and others.
A Metaphysical Digression
I’ll begin with a brief metaphysical digression on the nature of reality as I sense it and understand it, to provide some context for my approach.
Many of us have probably tried a little “magic trick” at some point: staring at our own eyes in a mirror – or into another person’s eyes – without blinking too much, while keeping the gaze slightly peripheral and defocused (similar to how one looks at those “Magic Eye” images). If you haven’t tried it, give it a go. Before long, you’ll notice that your face – or your partner’s – starts to flicker, shift, blur, sometimes even dissolve altogether.
This flickering is important.
If you meditate or train concentration with your eyes open on a visual object, you’ve almost certainly experienced something similar. Let’s call it the “flicker of Māyā.” Our seemingly solid yet profoundly illusory reality matrix – including the physical one. Māyā.
Mark Rasmus – a remarkable contemporary teacher working with Franz Bardon–style Hermeticism integrated with Buddhism – describes this flickering beautifully in the context of meditation exercises:
“For example, we can place a meditation object in front of us, put our hands over the meditation object and begin breathing Akasha into the object. We continue to do this until the object starts to flicker. It appears and disappears, where you can see through the object and then it reappears again. These flickers last a fraction of a second, but there is a clearer view straight through the object. This is as the mind goes into the Akashic substance of the object, and then the law of rhythm pulls you back to form, it appears and disappears. These are the first signs that you are able to produce Akasha within that object within the physical world and for it to begin to affect your perceptions. This stage is very important because this flickering in and out of form is what opens the door to spiritual light, to non-dual light.” [my emphasis]
Looking more broadly, the sages say that all of our reality is such a flicker – it is continuously coming into being and dissolving again. In fleeting flashes lasting nanoseconds. This is spoken of again and again by the enlightened of all traditions: by the Indian sages – the rishis – and, very recently and with remarkable clarity, by Ibrahim Karim, the founder of Biogeometry and one of the great contemporary architects of subtle-energy science. From his outstanding and very recent book Hidden Reality:
Dr. Karim presents a rather complex description of reality’s “pulsation,” articulated through his own terminology. Reality, he explains, is not static, but constantly pulsates, coming into manifestation from the Absolute through the impulse of the Psychon, which arises from the Ziron axis as a bidirectional toroidal movement. Each impulse gives rise both to the beginning and the end of every minute flicker – which, in truth, are unified in a higher dimension, much like the two ends of a stretched elastic band that converge in a single center.
What we perceive as continuous motion or stable form is, in reality, an infinite sequence of such impulses – similar to individual frames of a film that create the illusion of continuity. These impulses are bidirectional: the outward, centrifugal force – oriented toward multiplicity – is mental in nature; it differentiates and projects diversity, i.e., the Divine Mind in action. The centripetal force, by contrast, is emotional in nature – an inward, unconditional-love–grounded return path: the longing of all existence to return to the Absolute.
Thus, every form in physical space is a temporary, pulsating condensation of an archetypal “idea,” continuously created and re-created through this two-directional mental–emotional movement, while simultaneously remaining anchored in a centering, non-dual quality – an energetic quality found, for example, at the center of a perfect circle, in power spots, or radiated by truly realized saints. In Biogeometry, this quality is referred to as BG3.
Here are a few quotations from this powerful book:
“The pulsating Psychons emerge from the background medium in multiple dimensions for an infinitesimally short time, like bubbles in boiling water, giving a surface appearance of stable absolute reality…’ un ‘Absolute reality as well as everything emerging from it is formed of temporary pulses emerging into being from deeper dimensions and the falling back out of reality.”
and
“The outward (centrifugal) diversifying force is mental in nature while the inward (centripetal) unifying force of attraction is emotional in nature.”, kā arī: “We can say that unconditional LOVE is the emotional force centrally pulling the heart to the Ziron.”
And also:
“The Psychon pulse is at the center of the two-way spiraling bi-directional motion on the projected Ziron axis. The pulse produces the beginning and end at the turning point before it retracts into the Ziron center. The beginning and end points on this level are the turning points of the outward-inward moving spiral. These turning points manifest as temporary opposite unified complementary qualities before retracting back into the center, just like the end points on a stretched elastic band. In this mode of perception, the two BG3 points at the beginning and end of the linear flow of a line are one and the same as they are not within the linear flow of physical time-space. Following this concept, we will always detect the BG3 point at the center of the line where the line originated as a bi-directional pulse. A pulse therefore always originates from the vortex at its center. Beginning and end are always connected through their unified origin and continuously affect each other in their manifestation as a line of motion. Any motion is composed of endless such pulses emerging and disappearing in and out of several dimensions giving the appearance of permanency in each dimension. This is like the film strip effect where separate images project as a continuous reality. Every line drawn in the physical dimension is therefore a manifestation of the spiritual archetypal Psychon pulse creating a time-space Energy Key producing the time-space movement of the line in the physical dimension. This concept applies to all living systems in nature where the beginning and end of every life are interconnected and affect each other; their interaction activates a higher spiritual connection.”
Here is another source of inspiration, a different yet similar perspective, from a visionary healer of the highest level, Barbara Ann Brennan:
The deepest dimension of our being is the core dimension in which the core star exists. The core star dimension is our natural divine source of life; it is the source of life within us. Both in the center of the core star and at its outer perimeter that stretches out infinitely is what I call the “black velvet void.” (See Figure 1–1.) The black velvet void is teeming with un-manifest life. It is full of unimaginable power; it is the source of all manifestation. This undifferentiated life exists within and all around us. It is the foundation of all that is normally called life, on all levels we know, including these four dimensions. When I perceive it with HSP, it is in constant motion, yet it is still. It is un-manifest, yet I experience more life there than in any of the four dimensions of the manifested levels of our being.
[..]
Moving out from this central area of no-thing-ness is the creation of light, the edge of creation from no-thing-ness into the manifestation of light. The core star light is the first manifestation out of the void and into individuality. It appears as a bright point of light that radiates out from us in all directions.
[..]
There is no disconnection
from the void of the core essence
to all else within your life.
The surging of your life force
and its manifestations
comes from this deep apparent emptiness.
You can find this deep, black, velvet void
within the center of every cell,
within every cell’s nucleus,
within the DNA,
always surrounded by the
supernova explosion of core essence
Or the Indian mystic Anandamayi Ma:
“Find the One everywhere and in everything and there will be an end to pain and suffering.”
In my view, the practically important and usable insight in all of this is the following: everything – and especially the human being, who is endowed with the capacity to consciously relate to Spirit – contains an a priori, built-in tendency toward the Source, toward the Absolute. We would not exist without this return-movement (or upward aspiration), because it is an inseparable part of reality itself. It is there by default. Moreover, this tendency is not mental in nature – it is a felt tendency, a centripetal movement of the heart, so to speak. The path of the mind is centrifugal and diversifying.
The path of the heart is centripetal and unifying.
This is why my “trick,” when working with mantras and prayers whose resonance path leads toward divine planes close to the Absolute (for example, prayers to the Divine Mother, mantras to bodhisattvas, or invocations of angels and saints), is to consciously step into this immanent – always-present – felt current of return that is woven into reality itself, and simply allow myself to be carried by it.
How does this work?
I’ll start with a rather schematic image – borrowed from an old book and slightly “upgraded” by me – to give an intuitive sense of what I mean.
If you’ve spent even a little time in the realm of spiritual practice or esotericism, the lower part of the image should be self-explanatory: the familiar energy centers – the chakras – the layers of the subtle bodies of the aura, the transpersonal soul-star and earth-star chakras beyond the physical body… And then there is verticality – our “central channel,” which both grounds us in the center of the Earth and connects us to the highest planes of Spirit, schematically represented at the top of the image.
The ability to feel this verticality is of crucial importance. When a person prays or recites a mantra, they never do so downward or horizontally. Consciousness always moves upward automatically – it aspires upward. Why is that, I wonder? 😊
Within this central axis there is a constant bidirectional flow, much like the momentary pulses of reality’s own flickering. It is a built-in, immanent feedback loop with Spirit. It is always there, even if you do not feel it (for example, if you live as a convinced materialist). And yet every single cell in your body has this feedback loop. Otherwise it would not exist. Spirit is the Source. Absolute Consciousness is entirely immaterial. Materiality is its terminal fractal expression.
This feedback connection can be learned to be felt. First, this means sensing your own vertical axis – the verticality of Spirit – strengthening it, and then sensing this return flow. And then – stepping into it and surrendering.
This approach, in my experience, is the most effective way to work with prayers or mantras that are rooted in divine planes close to the Absolute (schematically shown in the upper part of the previous image). Through prayer, through verticality and upward aspiration, you create a resonance “pathway” with the egregore of the corresponding spiritual tradition and its divine beings – and, most importantly, with your own Spirit.
And paradoxically, this works best not by forcing yourself upward with willpower and mental focus, as if swimming against the current, but by simply sensing the built-in return flow toward Spirit within you and allowing yourself to be carried by it. In this way, mantra practice becomes ten times more vivid, direct, and connected – not to mention the sense of bliss that arises as your energy bodies resonate with these higher planes and Teachers.
A description of the specific method will follow – but for it to begin working at all, even to a small degree, several prerequisites are necessary.
Preconditions for the Method
1. First and foremost, you must learn to maintain mental silence
At the beginning, this is a fairly technical task – there is no magic involved. With the right exercises, some people can achieve it within a few months; for others it may take a bit longer. But it is absolutely doable.
For many years of my life, my mind was total chaos – a complete mess. For a long time, my “meditations” looked exactly like that: jerky, looping mental sludge with a few energetic side effects sprinkled in. At some point, I realized that without mastering the mind, there was no way forward. So I started digging in this direction – trying a wide range of mental training methods, from Buddhist techniques, to Mouni Sadhu’s little books on concentration, to Franz Bardon’s hermetic system.
As a Westerner, what worked best for me personally were the mental exercises from Stage I of Franz Bardon’s Initiation into Hermetics.
Please see a detailed overview at the end of this post1.
2. Learning to Sense Your Vertical Axis
People who do not feel their energy body and its structures usually have simply never chosen to pay attention to it, or never had the opportunity. So, to begin with, simply imagine that an infinitely tall vertical axis runs through you, and try to sense it as a vertical thread or a column of light. This is an energetic “muscle” that can be trained.
Try “walking” up and down along it. Try to sense whether there are places where it feels narrow or constricted. Try to feel the upward flow, and the downward flow. Try to climb as high as you possibly can and, as it were, pull yourself upward from above… because the most essential part of you is already there – it has always been there!
So the task is to sense this ever-present pull of Spirit from above, this constant back-drawing. There are many possible approaches.
Another crucial aspect is the openness of the upper centers (especially the crown chakra). This, too, can and should be worked with – ideally under the guidance of a knowledgeable teacher.
3. Turning Toward God from the Heart
One must turn toward God from the heart – not to ask for something for oneself (money, health, relationships), but simply to be Home. To warm oneself at one’s true hearth. Or to pray for others.
Let us return to the metaphysical description given at the beginning: the two-directional movement of the fleeting appearance of elements in the matrix of reality – the mental, projecting, diversifying force through which existence flashes into manifestation, and the emotional, centripetal return flow through which it returns to the Absolute.
Exactly the same dynamic exists in the human archetype. In every molecule of you there exists both the entropic, diversifying centrifugal force of creation and the centripetal return path to the Absolute.
And when you turn upward with the heart, with unconditional love, without demands, without requests, returning toward the Absolute and allowing yourself to be carried by this natural pull, you mirror the centripetal force of reality itself. This activates an entirely different level of resonance and communication.
Because, in the context of hierarchies of Light, we are like small children – unconscious, like ants that cannot see beyond their anthill – while these great beings of Light and forms of consciousness operate on entirely different levels and scales of existence.
We cannot approach angelic beings from our everyday mental consciousness and human cravings, along the lines of:
“Hey, Archangel Michael, how’s it going, help me out! Heal my bad hip! And also – my husband doesn’t go to church but practices qigong, fix him!”
When asking for specific things from the ego rather than cultivating a general upward aspiration toward the Source, one also risks attracting the wrong kinds of beings. These may scatter glittering particles of false light and activate some powerful vibration, and you may believe that a true angel has arrived, ready to fulfill all your wishes. Sorry to disappoint all manifesters – that’s usually not how it works.
We must use what is almost the only true shared resonance we have with angelic beings: our universal return-pull toward the Absolute. And the stronger our aspiration toward God, the better we can resonate with these highest beings, whose own aspiration toward God is absolute.
Can you imagine how much an archangel loves God and the created world – including this Earth and all of us? If you ever feel even a thousandth part of that infinite love, very much in your life will change.
It is precisely our upward aspiration that makes us “visible” and brings us into the possibility of shared resonance, so that through mantra or prayer we may abide together with these forces in Absolute Light.
That is why reciting a mantra or prayer with unconditional upward aspiration, through the heart, with love, is the greatest power.
If you do not yet have an experiential frame of reference for what it means to “love God,” then surely you have had moments of unconditional love for the world, for nature, for your children, or for your partner. Use that feeling. If you have children, this should be especially easy. Simply love “upward” with the same unconditional love you feel for your child.
4. Surrender. Let Go of Control.
Try not to react to phenomena if they arise. Let them be, without engaging. Yes, the first times they may catch you unprepared – later you will get used to them.
If shimmering lights or a “strobe effect” appear in inner vision, or if various energy movements arise in the body, pressure in the head, sounds, images, euphoria, or, on the contrary, pain – allow it all, and remain peripherally aware. That is, always remain anchored in the quiet background you (hopefully) cultivated in the mental training described earlier.
Any reaction will likely throw you back into ordinary mental mode, and the resonance connection you are trying to establish and maintain will disappear.
Simply catch the sensation of the upward-moving return flow and allow yourself to be carried by it. When practicing prayers and mantras from genuine schools of Light, only good things can happen to you. If you wish, you can write down observed phenomena and insights afterward and reflect on them after the practice.
5. Your Resonance with a Particular School of Light
Some schools of Light are literally waiting for you to re-establish contact with them – you practiced strongly in that school in previous lives, and restoring resonance may be a single click. Experiences will be direct and powerful, and you may become a carrier of that teaching in this life, or a healer, or something else.
With other schools, the relationship may need to be built from scratch, because there has been no resonance so far. But that doesn’t mean you can’t gain new Light-friends! Why not?
Often, you will be led to your school by a strong, unconscious pull. But if you have a rigid, fixed mind with strong projections or book-based concepts, the process may take longer.
Personally, I use several methods to determine whether a particular school or mantra strengthens or weakens me. I work only with those that strengthen me. By the way, even mantras from completely authentic, powerful schools rooted in the highest Light can weaken someone. That simply means it is another path, not meant for me at this stage or in this life. We cannot walk all paths at once.
So the keywords are: verticality, mental silence, upward aspiration, openness, non-reaction, surrender.
How does it look like in practice?
I sit down in a quiet, calm meditation space, undisturbed, all gadgets off, in a place that is already “worked” by practice, and I spend 10 minutes observing the mind, slowly sinking into deeper silence and peace.
The place matters a lot. If you have a special, clean, balanced space dedicated to practice, it will help – especially if you practice there long-term. The resonance shimmer of prayers / mantras will fill it.
Also – sit in a good posture. The most important thing is a straight spine. Adjust the rest according to preference and physical condition. Sure, when you’ve reached enlightenment and your central channel has turned into a radiant central pillar three meters in diameter, posture will matter less, but for now – it matters a lot.
Physical stillness is very important. A still body ↔ a calm mind, and vice versa: a restless mind ↔ a restless body. These correlations are strong. So simply forcing yourself to sit absolutely still (yes, willpower helps here) is a pretty effective path toward at least partial mental calm – or at least some breakthrough experience – because at the beginning the body will do everything to move, even in very comfortable positions.
Then I begin to recite the given mantra or prayer. I know it suits me, I resonate with it. I do it in my vertical channel (or very, very high above my head). And I do it with as much unconditional love and gratitude as I can gather.
Because of human dual nature (or maybe because the brain has two hemispheres?) we can very easily recite one thing mechanically while thinking something else. That’s exactly what happens in many people’s minds when they recite mantras or prayers. That kind of practice yields little fruit.
The trick is to consciously use this dual nature for our benefit: once I’ve started reciting, I sort of split my consciousness into the mental aspect (left hemisphere) and use it to “technically” recite the prayer / mantra – while I move all my focus into the emotional aspect (right hemisphere), aspiring to feel the mantra’s energy. And I do it from the heart, with the strongest feeling of love possible.
That’s easy. This feeling-based approach resonates beautifully with our natural return-aspiration toward Spirit – so fairly soon the mantra and I get “wrapped” in a light vibration (and light, etc.), which is the real key and the path to its Source.
It doesn’t matter how many times I recite a mantra – 108 thousand times or whatever. What matters is how well I feel the vibration that stands “behind” it.
When this vibration is strong enough, while the mind stays steadily occupied with the recitation, I simply surrender through feeling into this quiet background vibration, trying to sense the “built-in” return-flow inside it. And inevitably, at some point – sometimes sooner, sometimes later – without doing anything else, simply by switching on my aspiration toward the Absolute – our main shared resonance denominator with true Schools of Light and beings – I enter a very strong resonance with the School of Light or being that “stands” behind the given prayer or mantra. And I surrender. I surrender to the process itself, and to the higher wisdom of higher powers. That’s it.
In this process the spectrum of experiences and phenomena is wide, but one common denominator might be bliss. For someone else it might also be “magical healing”. For someone – deep understanding of their place in this world…
If you truly manage to sustain strong resonance with these layers of Spirit-light, your brain biochemistry will dance in bliss – you won’t get such a kind cocktail of endorphins, serotonin, and dopamine from any biohacking efforts, nootropic stacks, or trips with natural substances. No grey November-to-February morning will feel depressing!
Reciting a prayer or mantra long-term, day after day, you will build such a strong resonance connection that you’ll enter resonance with that school’s light within just a few minutes of beginning practice. Ambrosia and manna for free!
And you should understand: communication with these planes happens largely through your Spirit. Through these practices – and especially through states of silence – it finally comes forward and begins to breathe more directly in this physical world. That may radically change your current persona’s interests, desires, and life trajectory… If higher powers see (and they see you completely, all your dirty laundry, all the skeletons in the closet) that you can bring especially much light to this world, you may be given more than others – so you can pass it on.
All the above is written in a somewhat complicated way, but the principle is basically simple. Here’s the recap:
Feel your vertical axis, recite the mantra or prayer, do it from the heart, with aspiration upward, focusing not so much on the words but on the feeling and vibration it gradually creates around you. When it becomes strong, gently connect to this vibration and sense the return-flow within it toward its Source. Let it carry you without controlling. That’s it.
P.S. If you liked the idea at the beginning about maya / Māyā – our reality hologram and the mental centrifugal and emotional centripetal movement of reality’s primal elements as the basis of its “flicker” – then a good everyday trick is to try to lovingly feel this center and centripetal pull in everything you see. Basically: to see in everything the way back to God.
Here’s what Ibrahim Karim writes:
“If we want to find the BG3 power spots in the grains of sand in the desert or the molecules of the air, we must be able to visualize the endless spots of light within the perceived pictures or project a word of prayer onto them to manifest their centers. (..) The projection of Divine light from within will have created the color luminescence of perceived reality. The Divine light is, however, still present in the essence of colors. By turning our attention to the light at the essence of the colors we resonate with it. This resonance is a two-way amplification of the BG3 quality.”
Personally, this seemingly purely mental gymnastics – feeling the centers of all existence and their centripetal pull – has sometimes allowed me to experience quite non-dual and blissful states even in everyday life. What’s essential here is maintaining a steady felt sense of this inner centripetal flow – the eternally active return-to-the-Absolute built into reality’s nature, in every atom, every moment – in everything you see. To see in everything its return-aspiration toward the Source is to bless it, helping the return-path of its transcendence to glow…
This centripetal pull is also a stable ground for Spirit, like the space of silence in deep practice – but now, also in the bustle and flicker of daily life. Worth it. Wait for surprises!
- Mental Training for Mental Silence and Clarity
(my interpretation of the mental exercises from Stage I of Franz Bardon’s Initiation into Hermetics)
Goal
To cultivate a stable center of awareness, develop mastery over mental content, and deepen conscious access to the calm silence “behind” your thoughts – the gateway to your deepest essence.
Overview
Mental clarity and silence do not arise by themselves – they are cultivated. The three practices below form a gradual path of inner mental mastery:
Calm observation – observing thoughts and thought-forms without reacting.
Active control – actively dissolving thoughts and thought-forms.
Concentration – sustaining focused attention on a single thought-form.
Each practice works on a different layer of your mental field. Practiced daily, they gradually reduce internal mental “noise” and bring you into contact with a deep state of inner peace and bliss.
1. Calm Observation – the Dark Background
Sit completely still. Keep your spine straight, eliminate all distractions and gadgets, and close your eyes. During this practice, your only task is to maintain awareness without following the chains of thoughts and thought-forms arising in your mind.
Let your focus rest gently on the dark inner space that appears when your eyes are closed – the “mental background.” Thought-forms will come and go: images paired with emotions, memories, internal dialogue. Your task is simply to observe them without reacting or engaging. Let them drift like clouds across the sky, while you calmly maintain contact with the silent, stable matrix of space “behind” this content.
If something repeats itself or triggers strong emotions, make a mental note and later write it down in a journal – these are valuable clues for further introspection into your personality structure and the aspects you may not want to see.
Goal: 10 minutes of uninterrupted, calm observation, without losing yourself in streams of thoughts, emotions, or visual fantasies.
2. Active Control – the Mental Guard
Now you take on a more active role. Focus on the “layer” where thoughts first begin to arise – the very moment of their birth. Your task is to catch the very first seed of a thought-form before it fully manifests.
Metaphorically speaking, you are like a guard on a fortress wall scanning the darkness, or a photographer standing motionless, waiting for a rare bird to emerge from the jungle, or a goalkeeper standing alert in front of the goal, tracking every movement of the attackers. Your position is active; you are always ready, vigilant.
The moment any content appears – a word, an image, a flicker of inner movement – you dissolve it immediately. Not by force, but through alert presence: briefly focusing your attention on it and then returning to the mental background matrix.
With diligent practice, you will learn to sense a very specific, extremely subtle vibration that occurs when a new thought-form begins to take shape. It is like an etheric little switch in your head. If you can feel it, you can learn to turn it on and off at will. This becomes an immensely useful ability.
In truth, maintaining a clear mind is not some advanced acrobatics – with the right technique and a bit of training, even if it seems impossible at first, it becomes achievable.
Goal: 10 minutes of uninterrupted vigilance, catching and stopping any mental fluctuation at its point of origin.
3. Focused Concentration – Sustaining a Single Thought-Form
In the third practice, you reverse the challenge: instead of dissolving thoughts, you choose one – and hold only that one in your mind.
Choose a single object: a prayer, a mantra, a visual image (a sacred object or, conversely, something completely mundane – glasses, a candle), a sound, a color. Emotionally charged thought-forms or meaningful objects (for example, something belonging to your child or partner) are often easier to hold, because you already have a connection to them.
Your task is to maintain only this one thought-form in consciousness, without any interference.
Goal: 10 minutes of uninterrupted concentration on the chosen thought-form.
Notes and Tracking Progress
Start with 30 seconds for each exercise. Then gradually increase the time: 1 minute, 2 minutes, 5 minutes, 10 minutes. Use a timer. Track your progress in an introspection journal.
Using a rosary or prayer beads can help: hold the beads in your hand, and each time you notice your mind has drifted – lunch fantasies, emotions, images, thinking – move one bead forward with your thumb, return to the practice, and at the end count all the “drifts.” This creates radical honesty with yourself and a visible measure of progress.
Do not expect it to be easy at first. Initially, you may drift away within seconds. Do not give up. One clean, thought-free minute is a great achievement. Then two, ten, an hour… and so on.
The Emergence of Silence
With sustained practice, you will begin to notice something “beneath,” “behind,” or “around” your thoughts: silence. A vast, quiet sense of presence.
When you feel that the silence has deepened, gently transition from the specific task into direct communion with this clear silence. Simply be in it and allow yourself to rest there. By now, this will feel easy, because thoughts will have subsided.
When you touch this space, you may experience a sense of time stopping, and find yourself emerging after an hour, though it feels like you entered silence only briefly. The physical body may seem to disappear. You may feel infinite expansion, joy, bliss, perhaps also deep insight into yourself and your place in the world.
Allow yourself to be carried by this silence – it is the doorway to your true Self. You see, for your true Self to come forward and reveal itself, consciousness needs duration. This mental silence is a perfect, stable, unchanging, conscious duration in which it can appear.
The more you remain in this silence, the weaker the pull of dysfunctional thoughts and emotional reactivity becomes. By combining this centered presence in silence with the ability to dissolve thoughts (Exercise 2), you will begin to transform your entire mental ecosystem and sever addictive stimulus–response loops. This will positively affect not only your psychological but even your physical health.
Reaching 10 minutes for each exercise may take several months – or longer – depending on the structure of your psyche, the regularity of practice, your focus, your ability to surrender, and so on.
Recommended Resources for This Practice
Mark Rasmus – books and teaching materials
https://www.amazon.de/-/en/Back-Door-Into-Hermetics-Initiated/dp/1735771406
Rawn Clark – excellent videos
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rbO9csEPGwc
Sixty Skills – also a very good resource
Final Note
An unclean, restless mind can arise for many different reasons – not only due to a lack of mental mastery or awareness. These may include: low physical and/or vital energy, imbalanced energies, organ dysfunction, samskaras (“scars,” “traumas,” and blockages in the astral body from this or previous lives), self-reinforcing psycho-emotional patterns that have acquired near-autonomous behavior, everyday stress, excessive consumption of unnecessary information (social media, etc.), as well as more esoteric factors such as astral parasites, connections to unhealthy egregores, or entities.
It is important to understand that we are open energy structures not only physically (we breathe, eat, etc.), but on all subtle levels without exception. We “eat” and “breathe” on each of them.
More on this, perhaps, another time. ↩︎
If you’d like to support more writing like this, you can: