Re: clarity of meditation

["Alan Cook" <fish_studios@...>]

Dear Dave,

>>Hello, I'm new here. I've been studing Bardon's method's for about 
3 monthes now but some of his comments on meditation in "Introduction 
to Heremetics" are a little ambiguous. First, is "holding a single 
thought in your mind" the same as visualizing a simple object like a 
triangle or square? If not I am not sure what the second part of the 
Magical Mental Training in part I is asking? could it be more of an 
intense feeling? I know this is a hard question to awnser, any 
thoughts would be useful. <<

First let me say welcome to BardonPraxis :)
Holding a single thought, is a bit more general than you are making 
it. It's more of a single idea, such as thinking about the fire 
element from the Theory section of IIH. You focus only on the fire 
element, and nothing else. The idea is to keep the mind focused on 
one idea only. Not to let it go off on tangents. I'm sure you've 
had conversations with people, it even happens in some of my classes, 
that at some point you stop and say "How did we get to talking about 
peanut butter and jelly sandwiches when we were talking about Bill 
Clinton getting kicked out of office?" (This actually happened once) 
You just want to train your mind not to wander off on it's own.

>> Also there seems to be a gradient of clarity during my meditations 
(when I am attempting part 3 of step I, the evacuation of any 
thoughts from the mind) and I have been wondering exactly what level 
of concentration is necessary for the completion of this step. <<

>> The way Bardon states it the hermeticist must maintain state #4 
unbroken for 10 minutes or nearly so. This seems a bit difficult for 
this stage of development doesn't it? I would expect it to take 1 or 
2 years to attain that, am I doing something wrong or interpreting 
him incorrectly? <<

Your interpretation is correct. There is to be no thought in the 
mind for ten minutes minimum, which you increase in the later steps. 
But your method may be throwing you a bit off. All of these states 
of mind are natural states. The vacany one being more natural than 
the others. We've just been training wrong since we were born ;) 
You're not wanting to block thoughts out, or push them away. You 
want to let your mind *empty* itself of thought. You want to let the 
thoughts *flow* out of your mind. If you think of your mind as a 
bubble, you have some liquid trapped inside, you want it out. You 
can try and push it all out, but when some liquid comes back it's in 
there. You want to sort of burst the bubble, let the liquid flow out 
on its own. You want to *open* your mind, not *close* it. You might 
agree that right now, the method you are using is more of a "grabbing 
hold" of you mind, than "letting go" of your mind.

Hopefully this will help you with the Step I exercises.

As far as pictures and visualizations for the part 2b of Step I 
mental, these are more for Step II. But I saw images of my thoughts 
all the time, but I just wouldn't concentrate on an image as 
my "idea" for that exercise. I suppose it would be alright to do so, 
but the exercise is a bit more general than that.

Best of luck in your work.

All Will Go Well,
--Alan